Igniting an Innovation Culture
Igniting an Innovation Culture

CLP nurtures a company-wide culture of innovation supported by the Design Thinking process that helps the company save time and money, while making life immeasurably better for its employees and customers.

It’s probably happened to us all. We’re given directions to a friend or colleague’s home in a remote area, and try as we might, we can’t find the location on our maps or apps.

 

For most of us, it’s an occasional annoyance. But for frontline CLP employees performing routine meter reading services everyday, confusing street numbers and vague addresses could cost them a huge amount of time and effort.

A solution is now at hand, and innovation is the key. In January 2020, CLP employees took the initiative and used the company’s Microsoft PowerApps software to develop Meter GPS Assistance – a new, simple, easy-to-operate app with zero development cost that allows frontline colleagues to obtain and record the precise GPS address of each meter.

 

CLP engineer Dennis Lee shares on his journey in developing the application. “Our team members worked together and adopted the Design Thinking methodology to understand the pain points encountered by our frontline colleagues. We went through many trials and prototypes before getting to the final product,” he says. 

Meter GPS Assistance
GPS is used by the CLP-developed app to pinpoint the exact location of each meter.
Dennis Lee
CLP engineer Dennis Lee and his team has successfully developed Meter GPS Assistance to drive productivity and optimise customer service.

 

The Meter GPS Assistance case is one of the grand winners in CLP’s Grand Recognition programme, which is held every quarter to give credit to projects that have had a significant impact in raising levels of innovation and quality, improving safety and helping the company deliver its customer service promise. Entries demonstrate people-centric solutions, often self-initiated, that promote digitalisation, increase work efficiency and enhance customer experience.  

Changing mindsets

To cultivate the people-centric innovation culture and agile mindsets, CLP introduces Design Thinking and data analytics as a creative problem-solving approach that often results in novel ways of collaborating and working across the company about two years ago.

 

Design Thinking is more than a tool. It helps teams identify pain points from the perspectives of customers or users and rethink current processes through the development of prototypes and user testing before finding solutions.

 

Over 4,000 employees of CLP Power in Hong Kong have completed Design Thinking training to equip themselves with the necessary basic skills. Further training is provided to those who have been nominated to lead or take part in innovation projects. 

 

Unlocking vast potential

Design Thinking is only one of the many strategies that helps foster a culture of innovation. Driven by the knowledge that innovation is boundless and can bring unlimited possibilities, CLP has taken a series of steps to significantly expand its innovation culture since 2017. 

 

It has provided an online platform for colleagues to share innovative ideas, held seminars to exchange innovative insights, arranged visits to organisations in the forefront of innovation, trained up culture ambassadors, set up an experience centre [email protected] to exhibit smart city and innovative solutions, and redesigned office spaces to create an enabling environment that cultivates employees’ creative thinking.

SmartHub@CLP
With the use of state-of-the-art technology and interactive multimedia, [email protected] exhibits different innovative solutions for smart city development and promotes energy efficiency.
InnoCafe
Some CLP office spaces have been fitted with interactive wall to encourage innovation and creative thinking.

Building an innovation culture isn’t just about harnessing the latest technologies or creating ground-breaking inventions. At CLP, it is about co-creating on innovative and customer-centric solutions that bring about changes and create value for employees, customers, and the community at large.