An innovation revolution: Cisco's Innovate Everywhere Challenge

Cisco launched the Innovate Everywhere Challenge to encourage every employee to disrupt and innovate. The Challenge was structured in four phases that mimic the startup journey: ideation, investigation, seed funding and implementation. Ideation was first, where employees formed cross-functional teams to find a problem and propose a solution. After that, the semifinalist teams validated the market opportunity and technical feasibility of their ideas. In the next phase seed funding, the six finalists kept working on their ideas, connected with internal sponsors and continued marketing their ideas using grassroots methods. And, in the last phase, the three winners received $50,000, technology resources, mentors, and the option to take three months off from their job.