SPB recently hosted its third iSPB Day, the third of the conferences that we have been holding for the last few months in which we have been welcoming leading innovation professionals to our facilities to share their experiences in this field with us.
In the first session, which we held in July, we welcomed Rubén Hidalgo, Director of Corporate Venturing at CAPSA FOOD, and on the second day, Alberto Terol, head of change management at Ferrovial. Two very interesting profiles with whom we delved into topics such as open innovation, the promotion of innovative culture, cultural and digital transformation, talent training and new technologies.
On this last day, our guest was Emilio Martínez Gavira, Director of Entrepreneurship and Open Innovation at Enagás. He has been working at this multinational for 8 years, but his professional career has always been linked to innovation and entrepreneurship.
The event took place at the Innovation and Development Centre in Cheste and, in this case, it was Eva Giner, Innovation Manager at SPB Global, who was in charge of interviewing him. The event was also attended by the company’s president, Miguel Burdeos, as well as Gracia Burdeos, CEO, Natalia García, corporate general manager, Jose Cabanes, business development general manager and Sergio Belenguer, financial and purchasing general manager, as well as the rest of the directors and other people interested in the subject.
As we have already introduced, the theme of the conference was intrapreneurship, a practice that consists of fostering an entrepreneurial culture among the employees of an existing company, and on which Enagás and Emilio Martínez are great experts.
Enagás opened the door to intrapreneurship almost 10 years ago. At a time when the company was looking to diversify and the directors decided to ask the people who knew the most about the company what ideas could be implemented to initiate a cultural transformation: the employees themselves.
In every company there are creative and intrapreneurial people, but they must be given resources, time and motivation.
Emilio Martínez Gavira
This channel, which they called Ingenia, attracted the ideas of more than 200 workers, who submitted proposals on different topics. In the end, three of them were selected and the employees who had submitted them were rewarded with resources and time to develop their ideas.
Carrying out this intra-entrepreneurship vehicle has been very beneficial for the company, which has managed to motivate its employees and make them see that any of them has the power to innovate and undertake, reach managers, present their ideas and develop their careers with the support of a large corporation such as Enagás. It was, without a doubt, a before and after that led to a great cultural transformation.
For SPB Global, innovation is not only in the product, but also in the whole process and in the people who are part of it, so learning about new scenarios and methodologies is important to continue improving as a company.
