Alcampo

How can Alcampo rapidly develop an effective intrapreneurship program to generate ideas for new products and services?

ALCAMPO GROUPE AUCHAN

PROJECT TYPE

New Business Models

CONTEXT

As part of global retailer Auchan, present in twelve countries with over 150,000 employees, Alcampo, the Spanish division with over 300 stores, decided to establish an intrapreneurship initiative as a means to identify new business opportunities by harnessing the insights and interactions of their employees.
Auchan´s innovation strategy relied on intrapreneurship as the main tactic to generate new products and services, Alcampo engaged Think Creative to design and implement such a program. Our solution was based on three core elements and was so successful that elements of it were adopted by the headquarters in France. Training was provided to all Alcampo employees in Spain on creativity and entrepreneurship through a cascade training solution based on tight timelines and resource availability. We trained a small group of “master trainers” per supermarket and provided them the tools needed to facilitate workshops with employee base. An ideation engine was designed to foster participation and engagement and a filtering mechanism was set up to guarantee that only the best ideas made it to the investment committee. We designed a collaborative process to transform ideas into business models and to achieve problem-solution fit.

We implemented Alcampo’s intrapreneurship program and managed it during the first year. We received 400 ideas throughout the first year. We ended up selecting fifty, and worked with Alcampo’s innovation team and the intrapreneurs to narrow the list of potential pilots to five. On selection day the investment committee settled on a new retail model for fresh products and we designed the pilot that was later implemented by ALCAMPO. The program was so successful that it caught the attention of the headquarters, Groupe Auchan, in France, and we collaborated with their innovation department to implement the same program in France.