The Secret of the Centre of Excellence (CoE)

The secret of ensuring long-term success through the Centre of Excellence?

The Centre of Excellence today means ethical accountability, social responsibility and environmental stewardship. To win in the Asian century, CoEs need to position themselves for success in a volatile era, building new capabilities to address technological transformation and the threat of climate change. These challenges mean CoEs in Asia and beyond. We need to be ready to thrive in a radically different landscape. Perform at their highest level, maximize the diverse talent potential, and successfully navigate a complex and constantly evolving world. So start your journey towards the CoE.?

According to?research?by Brookings, millennials account for one-third of the world's workforce, and their representation in the labour market is expected to increase to 75% by 2025. Moreover, the millennial generation is the primary driver of Innovation and technological development. Therefore, this age bracket needs to be understood for businesses to know what the future of the workplace will look like and exploit this generation's potential.

• Millennials are often considered the?most knowledgeable and educated generation?in human history.?They are hard-wired for InnovationInnovation, and many are in leadership roles. In addition, this new breed has proven to be less risk-averse than older generations.?
• They are more open to ongoing learning opportunities in order to adapt to changing technologies and new realities, and they want feedback two times more often than other generations. This means they are willing to learn and be coached.
• Many millennials also prefer crowdsourcing and working in teams rather than independently. Their approach to IT is singular: They drive not only digital transformation in organizations but also prefer meaningful work that has a positive social impact.?
• In addition, millennials strive to realize their personal and professional potential. This drives organizations to accelerate inclusivity and sustainability by having real awareness, committing to change, rewarding the change, and providing coaching and development to make the change happen.

For example, cash-rich tech giants like Google or Salesforce provide their employees with creative platforms and time to work on projects of their choice, helping them develop personal skills, feel more engaged, and boost Innovation within the company. CoEs have proven to satisfy both necessities in business innovation and advancement and millennials' demands for skills and professional fulfilment.?

The CoE is a specialized team that develops and provides leadership, best practices, research, support and training for a focus area. This enables organizations to address their innovation and transformation agenda, gain a competitive advantage and secure continuous success with customers also being involved in the Innovation. CoEs benefit everyone, from stakeholders to employees to customers.?

Because CoEs are designed to drive Innovation and improvement, they also create an organizational structure that encourages the different members to measure, experiment, and push each other forward. By promoting more transparency and more shared results, they can be a powerful way for the organization to align around business goals rather than individual departmental metrics.?

With substantial resources to invest in their CoE, larger organizations are better equipped to choose the technologies and domains that are of interest to them, their employees and their customers. In addition, employees are allowed and even encouraged to spend their work time participating in CoEs. But what can smaller companies do with their little research and development budgets? To address this challenge, I propose a Partnership Innovation model based on the 'Open Innovation' framework, where organizations partner with different CoEs to drive innovations and expand new business or market opportunities.?

In short, organizations should provide full support for their employees' journeys to specialized knowledge and out-of-the-box thinking, but not regular enumeration or work time allocation. The CoE environment also encourages experimentation and enables people to go that extra mile. Companies might also want to give additional monetary benefits to employees who help the organizations score a new business deal as a result of unique knowledge gained through the CoE.

To summarize, over the last decade, CoEs have proven to be a catalyst for Innovation and business growth and a mechanism to help employees, organizations, and customers achieve their personal development and strategic goals. As we continue to see businesses in the technology world managed by millennials, the need to embrace a workplace medium that encourages self-development is becoming increasingly critical. And one of the best ways to facilitate crew and business growth, even at a small company, is to provide a platform that supports integral features of centres of excellence. In my next article, I shall unravel the secrets of the CoE. Stay Tuned!