#iDea. Company was born out of the desire to leverage innovation within Siemens and bring more and more colleagues together. Today, we are changing the way people can create impact in the company.

How it all began

I was lucky enough to be managed by the bright Patrick Pernegger for a long period of time, who is currently heading Transformation and Culture within Siemens IT. Patrick told the team about he created #iDea. Company a few years ago, in order to give people more freedom to come up with disruptive ideas and work on an agile basis – Sort of like an internal start-up in Siemens, that’s what we like to call it.

On the other hand, I was also as lucky to work alongside Jayne Biles in a couple of IT User Engagement initiatives, who is now the Head of Marketing for #iDea. As a young man with experience in marketing IT, I thought this was too big of a coincidence for me. Additionally, I was actively looking for new ideas on how I could meet new communities inside Siemens and be somehow a driver for change. I had heard so many great things about #iDea and so many cool people seemed to be involved in it, I thought – Why not? Shall we give it a try?

What am I talking about, really?

#iDea. Company is a community of volunteers who spend some of their time to doing something a little bit different. The goal of #iDea. is that everyone who joins can donate various portions of their time to work on different innovations that connect employees and make Siemens an awesome place to work.

You can check out our website and explore some of the tools we have developed so far, including the newest ‘Be My guest’ – which enables a couchsurfing experiences for Siemens colleagues -, the intuitive ‘InstaGauge’ – an internal survey tool -, the exciting ‘Siemens.FM’ – which allows anyone to create and manage podcasts – and many others!

For every single one of its contributors, #iDea is all about ownership. We can decide how we would like to help the company achieve its goals, including what tasks we would like to take on, what tools we would like to promote, what skills we would love to develop. #iDea is a never-ending sea of possibilities where everyone helps each other to be the best they can be, while also providing Siemens with some really cool services.

What now?

During my time in #iDea, I have some of our tools on both Yammer and SiemensWorld, alongside other things. My main contribution, however, has been in editing contributor VLOGs, where every colleague in the company can share a little bit about his / her story and explain he / she is excited to contribute to #iDea.

Being in #iDea has been of the greatest opportunities I’ve had during my time in Siemens, mostly because it’s a mutual journey in every single way: The company benefits from my inputs, I benefit from new skills and new connections, and my team benefits from a greater entrepreneurial spirit. To anyone who might be thinking of joining, I can only say – Do it!

Check out #iDea. Company.