Les Petits Ruisseaux?Font Les?Grandes Rivières

This example from Eneo Cameroon builds upon the Project Transformer principle of: “Frugality, diversity, experimentation – all drive innovation."

The French title of this article is the equivalent of the English idiom, “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow” – meaning that great things often start with small or simple beginnings. At Eneo, Cameroon’s national electrical utility, while we continue to work hard at solving some of the big, systemic energy issues our country faces (such as electrical infrastructure expansion, utility network stability, commercial loss reduction, and persistent financial constraints), we’ve also been seeking out and encouraging the smaller, everyday innovations of many of our employee teams.

In fact, we’ve just completed the 4th edition of our annual grassroots innovation program: Eneo Simply Smart Innovation. I’ll be highlighting some of the low-cost and no-cost innovation projects that have emerged during this fourth year of the company-wide competition. Note that this is not the typical new ideas “digital suggestion box” contests that are popular with many organizations. With Simply Smart Innovation, Eneo employee teams submit profiles of ingenious projects that they have already completed and measured. The best of these “Bright Spots” of employee-driven innovation can then be adapted (if needed) and scaled across the organization.

This year’s projects comprise a broad range of initiatives including systems for large equipment repurposing and repair, powerful community collaboration programs, and digital technology adaptation for field services. Together, the (relatively modest) initiatives of the 34 finalist teams in the latest Simply Smart Innovation competition have resulted in millions of dollars of cost savings and made important contributions toward our public-private partnership’s ongoing mission to help Cameroonians access safe, reliable, and affordable power.

While we still have many challenges and much work to do as an organization, I’m proud to be able to share some of the best of these excellent employee projects with you over the coming months. If you’d like to learn more about this program’s “Bright Spots” approach to innovation, please have a look at the thought-provoking research and insights in Pascale, Sternin & Sternin’s book, The Power of Positive Deviance; as well as Heath & Heath’s book, Switch.