Maggie, Author at Untap Compete

The 4 Types Of Innovation – Advantages For Your Organization And Impact On The Market

Why do we need to continuously look for new ways to do things if the traditional methods work? And what is the drive that makes big companies prioritize innovation, make changes to their vision, and to the products they sell? The answer is simple. Everyone is pursuing growth!

We live in an era of rapid technological progress in addition to continuous changes in market dynamics, and consumer behavior. Those changes have made innovation the only way to stay in the game.

In an interview with John Chamber, Cisco Chairman, he stated that all businesses need to figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies; otherwise, he clarifies, that 40% of them will not survive ten years from now.

Based on a study by lab25, an innovative company from a consumer’s perspective is a company that comes up with new ideas for their products, listens to customers, and keeps improving their current services. It also states that 83% of customers say that it is essential that the company they buy from is innovative; hence innovation drives consumer decision making.

Types of Innovation

To distinguish between the four types of innovation, we need to understand how well-defined is the problem we’re tackling, and the necessary knowledge domain or field of experience required to find a solution. Based on these two factors, we can identify the type of innovation we need and the means to get there.
In the following part, we are going to explain each innovation type.

Sustaining Innovation

Sustaining innovation is a type of innovation used to solve a well-defined problem that requires a specific skill domain to be solved. This innovation maintains your presence in the market and doesn’t require new technology.

Sustaining innovation means to create, amend, and experiment continuously. Not just to address a particular problem, but also to keep improving your operations, products, and market position.
Sustaining innovation can be managed through traditional R&D, design thinking processes, brainstorming, roadmapping, and acquisitions.

It is worth noting that collaborative models outpaced traditional R&D in sustaining innovation. Based on PWC’s re-inventing innovation publication, companies embrace open innovation by 61%, design thinking by 59%, and co-creating with customers, partners, and suppliers by 55%. Then comes traditional R&D by 34%.
An excellent example of sustaining Innovation is Pfizer, the largest pharmaceutical company by revenues. The company expanded to be a research-based company through innovation acquisitions.

Breakthrough Innovation

Despite the importance of sustaining innovation, it might not be enough to create a significant change that gives you an advantage over your competitors. Alternatively, breakthrough innovation uses new technology and sometimes a new business model to change a product or a process; this change usually results in a shift in the market that would take your competitors quite some time to catch up. Breakthrough innovation is typically related to your core offerings.

Some researchers call it radical innovation since breakthrough innovation does a paradigm shift in seeing the problem; it usually takes an unprecedented direction for solving the problem to the extent that it sometimes fulfills a need that the market never knew existed.
Like anything new, breakthrough innovations usually need some time to be understood and adopted by the market. However, when it does, it starts a series of changes to the market that reshapes the consumer behavior.
Open innovation is a perfect tool for creating breakthrough innovations, as it allows for a wide range of expertise and skill domains to work together on the problem. And usually, it results in the most novel and original solutions for a persistent problem.
An example of breakthrough innovation is Dyson, adopting new technology to create the first bagless vacuum cleaner, which significantly improved their market position.

Disruptive Innovation

The problem in disruptive innovation is not well-defined though the solution lies within the company expertise or skill domain.
In contrast to breakthrough innovation, disruptive innovation disrupts the existing market, significantly changing it by introducing new technology.

The concept of disruptive innovation was introduced by Professor and business consultant, Clayton Christensen, who defines it as an innovation that creates a new value network either by creating a new market or entering an existing market and changing it by eliminating existing players.

Disruptive innovation doesn’t disrupt the market overnight; it usually gets introduced to the market as a minor product without getting much attention from existing players or consumers. However, as non-consumers start adopting this innovation and regular consumers switching to it, a new market is created, fundamentally affecting the existing market and usually replacing it.

One tool to be used for disruptive innovation is innovation labs, where you engage your employees in creative collaboration to work on the problem on a long-term basis. Other tools are VC models or lean launchpads. Also, 15% 20% rule, where you make your employees spend 15-20% of their time creating and experimenting with new projects.

A famous example of disruptive innovation that used a new business model is Netflix, and the change they made on the home entertainment industry, also AirBnB, They disrupted the existing model of DVDs, introducing subscription-based streaming services. And later on, producing content themselves.
Therefore, disruptive innovation does more than just change a product or service; it also innovates a new business model.

Basic Innovation

Basic or incremental innovation is the continuous research effort done when you are not solving a defined problem, and the skill domain of the potential solution isn’t specified.
Basic innovation is as vital as other innovation types since continuous research protects your organization’s ability to innovate. It could also be the starting point of many significant innovations.

The good thing about basic research is that you can plan it based on your organization’s resources; it can take different forms as attending conferences, holding internal seminars, or investing in a lab if you have the resources.
Amazon, for example, established a perfect model for basic innovation on its website interface, with continuously amending, testing, and optimizing its interface on a daily basis.

In conclusion, innovation has become an integral part of company growth and even survival. Fortunately, innovation works in many directions; you can start from inside your company or outside your organizational boundaries. Whichever way you choose, you need to be continuously innovating and experimenting. One way to start is to reach out to solutions that make managing innovation programs simpler, easier, and more streamlined for you.
Feel free to contact us to schedule a demo to talk more about your innovation needs and what we can do to help

How Technology Can Simplify Talent Management

The emergence of talent management software solutions has helped many companies and organizations, specifically HR departments and teams, to simplify the way they find, attract, hire, and retain talented individuals.

However, a 2018 joint survey on job search trends revealed that 80% of full-time employees all over the world are actively seeking new employment opportunities while working with their current employer. It looks like even with modern talent management tools, business organizations are having difficulty keeping the majority of their workers.

That said, as new technologies break the surface, HR and talent management is set to become a breeze. Hopefully, these recent innovations will aid companies to find people who are not just the best fit for their organizations, but also those who are likely to stay.

1. Hire Smarter with BI

Most talent management system vendors will showcase their solutions’ ability to speed up the selection process by parsing resumes and automatically generating shortlists of candidates that meet specific criteria. While it does accelerate the filtering and selection stage, parsing and automated shortlists do not go beyond what is written in cover letters and CVs.

By incorporating business intelligence technology, or BI, with your talent management software, you can enhance your hiring process, identify the best candidates for the job, and solve problems in HR. BI tools can go deep into your hiring database, access large pools of prospects, and analyze which jobseekers match your requirements and other specifications.

BI hiring tools automatically measure costs per hire and quality per hire, as well as generate custom hiring performance success reports. This functionality helps you discover operational bottlenecks and issues as well as recommendations on how to optimize your hiring processes.

2. Identify and Monitor Workplace Sentiment via Analytics

It is crucial for any business organization to be aware of the prevailing sentiment in the workplace. Knowing what employees think and feel helps the higher management keep their workers engaged and motivated. While most employers utilize surveys to determine the sentiments of their employees, surveys are no longer producing actionable insights.

Conventional workplace surveys may have worked in the past. But it has certainly lost its charm and effect. According to a 2019 employee engagement study by Leadership IQ, 78% of companies said their employee engagement survey results scream poor quality and are unactionable.

Forbes contributor and leadership guru Mark Murphy explains that surveys are failing because companies are tackling too many workplace issues and yet fall flat in addressing them. This leaves employees disenchanted with surveys.

On top of that, surveys are expensive. From investing in an online form builder, building online survey forms and distributing them to gathering and analyzing feedback, all these cost your business money.

Fortunately, a new technology has emerged that is capable of measuring employee engagement and identifying sentiments in the workplace more accurately when paired with traditional surveys – sentiment analysis.

With sentiment analysis, the software gathers all the data from surveys administered by the organizations and dissects the information to determine the “whys” behind the responses. The software recognizes the prevailing “themes” of sentiment, such as benefits, training, burnout, workplace policies, specific employees, and so on.

This helps HR teams to quickly identify and review the sentiments and take action based on machine-analyzed and generated insights. Not on anecdotes, hunches, and guesses.

3. Provide Learning and Development Opportunities

Approximately 42 million employees were expected to exit their company and search for other opportunities back in 2018, according to a national study on workplace retention and turnover by the Work Institute. When current employers fall short of employees’ expectations and fail to address employee needs, workers tend to begin seeking and applying to potential new employers.

One of the reasons why employees leave the company is that employers fail to provide their workers with a career development growth plan. Workers tend to stay with a company for an extensive period of time provided there is a promise of growth and development.

But how do business organizations carve out a career plan for their employees? With performance management software, companies can measure critical KPIs such as engagement, productivity, and output efficiency. This solution helps them identify the strengths of their employees as well as problem areas that require addressing.

Combining talent and performance management systems with LMS or learning management software, companies are able to map out a career path for their workers. By helping employees acquire advanced skills and develop their existing ones, employers are enticing their workers to stay. Thus increasing retention rate while grooming employees to become indispensable assets in the future.

4. Get The Best Talent Through Social Media

From a talent acquisition perspective, social media presents employers with tons of acquisition opportunities if utilized correctly and effectively. It is a challenging task for companies. Yet when played right, acquisition teams can attract and hire the best talents via social media.

When you opt to leverage social media for hiring purposes, know that it’s way more than posting vacancies on your social media accounts. Trust is essential, especially after the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the purging of fake Twitter accounts back in 2018.

You have to create and distribute raw and authentic content that your target audience can relate to. Instead of influencers, you can get better results when you build and implement advocacy programs on social media with your employees as advocates.

Story sharing, online competitions, and 1-on-1 messaging via social media are expected to become hiring trends in the future as well with talent management system examples and demos showcasing such features.

The Essential Building Blocks of Your Competition Landing Page

Unlike most -if not all- of the other competition management software providers out there, Untap Compete offers a fully-fledged website builder for your competition landing page. We save you the time, effort, and money required to build a branded website that communicates comprehensive information about your competition.

In addition to managing your application and evaluation processes on Untap Compete, you can also have a beautiful landing page with all the bells and whistles. Your landing page will entice potential applicants to participate in your competition. Other solutions may enable you to list some information in a rigid manner. Untap Compete goes beyond to give you the flexibility to build something beautiful and unique.

We organized the website builder in a relevant way to anyone launching a competition or a call for applications.

When you open your dashboard and hover on Content, then click on Customize, you’ll be greeted with an easy-to-use website builder. It gives you instant control over the content elements you choose to fill out. You’ll be able to preview changes right away on the right-hand side.

You can customize the header; include your logo and build a menu linking to other pages that you can also create using Untap Compete.

Some of the content elements that we believe are essential to any competition are:

- An overview of the competition
- Eligibility Criteria
- Judging Criteria
- Competition Timeline
- Prizes
- FAQs
- Terms and Conditions

We also included some cool elements that we think would make your landing page stand out; a countdown timer to the application deadline, a customizable slideshow showcasing relevant images, a video embed to introduce applicants to your competition, and more.

On top of including all of the essential building blocks of a competition landing page, we give you the flexibility to customize your landing page using CSS. You can also add additional pages with more information about your competition and even have a blog with competition updates.

Some examples for competitions we power include Vodafone’s Innovation Hackathon, and the MEDIA LOVES TECH Competition by the Deutsche Welle. They showcase the level of customization you can reach with our website builder.

If you require support with the landing page customization, we would be there for you. Check our pricing plans and schedule a demo with us to show you how it works.

Which Submission Management Software works best for my Call for Applications?

Your calls for applications are your window to identify talents, generate insights, and gain access to innovative solutions. But how do you manage them? Choosing a suitable submission management software could be overwhelming. It all depends though on what you need, and what is best for you and your team.

To help you choose, we have prepared a list of factors you should consider while making your decision.

1. Real-Time Analysis

A status report on all your running calls for applications in addition to a detailed dashboard for each call for application separately is quite essential. The software should provide you with website analytics, applicants demographics, and other vital numbers and performance indicators. Those are important to check daily. This way, you stay on top of things and take necessary corrective actions when needed.

2. Easy for Applicants

The experience from the applicants’ standpoint has to be simple and to the point. For example, applicants should be able to track the status of their applications. Data entered in the application form should be automatically saved, allowing applicants to return to their applications at any time before the deadline and to continue where they left off. Such factors ensure a high applications’ completion rate.

3. Straightforward Process for Judges

The process for judges should be even more straightforward. The judge should have personal judging access to go right to the assigned submissions, which they should evaluate using simple forms. They should be able to communicate their feedback directly to applicants if they wish to, which takes us to the next point.

4. Automated Communication

Something we, at Untap, think is necessary is ensuring automated and cross-functional communication options. For example, Untap Compete allows you to set template emails to send to applicants upon submitting their applications. You can also send bulk emails, including announcements or updates to applicants based on their application status.
To make communication even more effective, we added chat support for applicants and judges as well as optional feedback space between judges and applicants.

5. Intuitive Interface and Workflow

Since not everyone is tech-savvy, we have developed our system to cater to all kinds of users. The flow is intuitive and smooth, and the instructions are self-explanatory, ensuring that users can navigate through it on their own without any manuals.
We have covered this to save you time and make tasks more enjoyable for your team.

6. Easy Form Builders

Building your submission and evaluation forms should be a breeze. Ensure an easy set-up through drag-and-drop form builders and fully customizable forms. The forms should be live on your website in no time.

7. External apps Integration

You need to have everything run and managed in one place, therefore have your necessary apps integrated with your submission management system. Untap Compete allows you to merge a number of your favourite applications such as Google Analytics, and MailChimp.

Last but not least, you should test and see the system for yourself, and make sure it has everything your call for applications needs. It should also be user-friendly (easy for your team).
All in all, the time and effort managing your call for applications should be minimal.
Having said that, we encourage you to schedule a demo for Untap Compete and get started with a FREE trial.

9 ways your online Form builder is costing you time and effort

You may think that online forms are the fastest way to manage your call for applications, especially when you quickly start receiving applications. However, you are only saving time in the beginning of the process. Once you begin accepting applications, it becomes a nightmare. You are left alone with a vast number of applications to process.

Alternatively, a submission management software like Untap Compete is designed to simplify every step of the process. It is your optimal solution to launch and most importantly manage your calls for applications efficiently saving time and effort.
Let’s face it. It is easy and cheap to get started with form builders or/and email attachments. However, you find yourself lost trying to process all the applications. You end up wasting more time than you initially saved.

A dedicated submission management system will allow you to manage, evaluate, and communicate all in one place with just a few clicks.

How can you benefit from Submission Management Software and overcome the problems you face with Online Form Builders?

1. Workflow instead of just an initial setup
While online forms start the process quickly and easily, you get overwhelmed when you start receiving the applications. With a submission management software, there is a streamlined workflow covering every step of the process with the help of a set of features you choose based on your needs.

2. Screening and Filtration in one place
In online forms, screening and filtration are done separately, which requires so much manual work. However, the right way to do it is in the same place, with evaluation forms to give accurate scores and auto-scoring to calculate total scores and rank submissions automatically.

3. Judges and judging panels access
Instead of sending information to third parties and manually putting scores on submissions, you can do both tasks in one place by inviting judges to access submissions.

4. Communication with users is made easy.
Communicate directly with judges, applicants, and other team members on the system. Send emails in bulk, and set reminders to communicate feedback with applicants. Have a summary of all users in one place with all their relevant information.

5. Real-time analysis of submissions
Your dashboard includes a real-time analysis for your call for applications that tracks the performance of your call for applications so you can take corrective actions when needed.

6. Multi-phase rounds
Create multiple rounds for the same call for applications. Seek more information with more advanced stages. Qualify participants from one phase to the next based on the potential they show for each phase.

7. Flexible submission form builder with no limitations
Use a sophisticated drag and drop submission form builder, supporting file uploading.

8. Auto-save applications and submit later options
It is hard for applicants to fill their applications in one sitting with no ability to edit and continue later. Applications need to be auto-saved for the applicant’s convenience.

9. Have the complete picture of applicants and potential applicants
Monitor potential applicants who just signed up or still did not complete their application. Send them reminders to submit. If you only view the submitted applications, you are losing contact with all the potential applicants who still did not click on “submit”.

In conclusion, a Submission Management Software like Untap Compete streamlines the submission process and makes it easy for you to receive, screen, evaluate, communicate, and filter submissions. It is also just more convenient from the applicants’ point of view.

Learn more about Untap Compete plans and features.

Find better solutions faster through innovation challenges

Innovation competitions aka innovation challenges are effective tools organizations use to access and connect with expert communities, with the aim of collaborating to develop the best sustainable ideas and solutions, these solutions are hard to reach depending on internal resources only.

That’s why many companies are using innovation challenges to access external resources and engage startups, customers, students, universities, etc. in their innovation processes. For example, general electric launched GE Fuse, an open innovation platform to solve technical problems engaging engineers from all over the world.

So whether you are looking for a new idea, a creative concept, a solution for a technical challenge, or a talented candidate, innovation challenges are the answer.

Below are six reasons why you should consider innovation challenges for solving your biggest problems:

1. Fast way to find ideas
You can control the timeline applicants will have to brainstorm, conceptualize, and submit their proposals.

2. Cost-efficient
Sticking to your preassigned resources and still managing to reach out to hundreds and sometimes thousands of innovators, add to this using a submission software to save some staff time and get the screening and judging work done quickly and smoothly.

3. Creates Focus
An online innovation challenge allows you to focus on one problem at a time and direct all internal and external resources towards it. When you reach a final solution and while the winning team is executing their idea, you can redirect the focus to another challenge.

4. Generate Insights
In addition to the solution you select to implement, you will also access some valuable ideas and perspectives, innovation challenges will give you insightful remarks on the problem and a number of approaches to look into.

5. Build a community
Get the best out of innovation challenges by compiling a database of innovators to use for outsourcing and/or hiring.

6. Create a Competitive Advantage
Innovation creates competitive advantages and sustainable growth by producing unique products, creating efficiency, and/or adding value to an existing product or service.

With innovation challenges you are not just creating value for your organization, you are also reducing costs, the cost of being replaced or left behind, moreover the cost of not leading the future, these are the costs you pay when you do not innovate.

Streamline your innovation using Untap compete ‘s solution for innovation challenges.

How can you make your call for applications work more efficiently through the multi-rounds feature?

Is it always best to use a one-time submission form to get all the information you need from an applicant before you make your final decision regarding their application?

Let us tell you our secret sauce to smartly manage your call for application and have everything put in one central place.

Creating an application funnel with multi rounds, each round with its own submission form and evaluation criteria will make collecting more information about your participants and managing the evaluation process much easier.

You break up your process into phases (i.e.: rounds) along the funnel then qualify participants from one phase to the next based on the potential they show for each phase. This ensures a high completion rate and makes it easier for your team/judges to filter applicants more efficiently, as it allows them to accept and reject applicants after being shortlisted and passing the eligibility phase.

Benefits of the multi-round applications process

The applicant submits the most relevant information at each phase
Create an application funnel with multiple phases and only applicants who show potential for that particular phase get qualified for the following one.
Create an eligibility phase to filter out irrelevant applications, so you invest your time evaluating worthy applications.
Be able to get different input for every phase depending on the requirements.
Define relevant eligibility criteria for each phase independently.
Manage everything centrally and have all information in one place.

Setting things up:

With Untap Compete we made it easy to set-up rounds and get everything up and running in no time:

Set-up round start and end dates for the applications as well as the evaluation phase.
Using a drag and drop form builder to build your submission form.
Same for the evaluation form, defining your evaluation criteria for the respective phase.
Invite judges to evaluate submissions.
Select the applications to proceed to the next round and the ones to get disqualified.
Repeat for as many rounds as you need.

Finally, always remember it is very easy to open a call for applications. How you manage it afterward makes the whole difference in terms of time and effort invested and the final results you reach.

Why you should go for an online hackathon for your next software developer hire?

Hiring the best and brightest software engineer is becoming one of the biggest challenges for many companies and startups, as there are more software developer openings than qualified people to fill them, according to the research from the app association there are 223,000 job openings for software developers in the US alone while the demand for applications predicted to grow three times by 2020.

With hiring challenges such as lack of experience, technical skills and software skills (workplace experience), and high salary demand, we have to ditch the old-school and replace it with more innovative and up-to-date methods to attract the right talents.

Here are 6 main reasons why you should consider online hackathons and coding challenges for your next hire:

1. Attract qualified candidates: Hackathons and coding challenges attract aspiring talents looking for a dynamic organization that values innovation and collaboration, talents who are up for a real-life challenge and aren’t afraid to tap into a competitive space to show their skills and bring what they have to the table.

2. Asses your candidates’ problem-solving skills, how they see real-time problems and the steps they take to tackle them is as important as the final solution they reach.

3. Test teamwork and collaborative skills, since online hackathons allow for working in teams, you can assess skills that can be very hard to test through interviews or home assignments like leadership and teamwork.

4. Working under pressure, since online hackathons are tied with a limited timeline, you get to test who can endure extended hours of intensive work to solve a certain problem when needed.

5. It’s efficient yet flexible! based on your timeline and resources, you get to choose the scale, ranging from a coding challenge that only takes a few hours, to a hackathon which takes from a few days to a few weeks. It is worth mentioning here that it has been observed that the recruitment time is cut down by almost 80% in hackathons

6. Evaluate accurately based on a set of predefined skills, giving scores based on all of the previously mentioned criteria rather than just the final output.

To conclude, many companies are moving towards online hackathons to reach the right talent as it is a cost-effective and time-efficient method, especially when using a dedicated platform to run the whole thing, you can pick a convenient software based on your budget and the kind of support you are looking for.

We encourage you to try your first experience with online hackathons and share with us how it went!

You can check out Untap Compete solutions here.