The visit to Omicron was absolutely surprising. I had never imagined that a model like theirs could work so well. It is amazing how you can motivate your employees with this philosophy of giving them so much freedom.
I really had the feeling that the guy who was guiding us was totally into it and loves his work and the company, as he stated, “I don’t really care if I’m home or here, both feels so comfortable.
The growth rate of Omicron is impressing.
At the beginning I though that the Stage Gate doesn’t really fit into this concept, but when he explained, that they are not really convinced by this approach and they adapted it with the overlapping stages, it made sense. It is right now the best possible and available innovation management process for them, but they are looking for something better suiting.
It was interesting, that they open a new department, when the employee rate exceeds 200.
Hilti in contrary are totally sure about the strict Stage Gate Model how Cooper developed it, where each stage is separated by a gate, which is monitored pretty rigorous. They are convinced that this is the approach to follow. There comes a critique point of myself in to play. I’m not quiet sure if they could be open-minded enough to look for other solutions, so to say an innovation of the innovation monitoring and managing process. It did not occur, at least to me, that they are looking for something other.
The presentation was informative and I liked it that the two presenter kind of interacted with each other.
The tour through the factory on the other hand was not that interesting for me. It was more suited for engineers, than for marketing and strategy students. It was interesting for some minutes but in the end too long.
It is obvious that the difference of employees and company size plays an important role how innovation processes could be managed and that the bigger a company is, the more stricter this approach has to be executed.
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