What does it take for a company to innovate at scale? Before ideas can flow across an organization, people first need to believe they can have ideas. Our journey with Nestlé (Thai) Ltd. began in 2007 with a keynote by Thinkergy's founder, Dr. D, for Nestlé's ice cream division. Its leader, Philippe Eberle, Executive Director, Ice Cream & Chilled, wanted more than inspiration. So in August 2007, he booked his team into a three-day X-IDEA Creativity Bootcamp at the Rose Garden Resort in Nakhon Pathom, near Bangkok.

The bootcamp was intense by design. Day one opened minds with a dose of Genius Journey, the mindset of creative geniuses. Then X-IDEA took over. Delegates learned twelve creative methods, then spent the final day and a half applying them to a real-life business case, from raw ideas to evaluated concepts and a proposed strategy. As Philippe Eberle put it, "Every individual has discovered that he/she can also have ideas and contribute to idea generation."

The energy spread fast. Philippe recommended Thinkergy to Nestlé's corporate HR team, and in December 2007, we ran a test bootcamp for the HR team and senior managers from head-office functions. From then on, Thinkergy was Nestlé Thailand's go-to partner for creativity and innovation training. Between 2007 and 2010, we delivered six three-day bootcamps in English, each for 30 to 35 managers. To let people learn without the pressure of a live Nestlé project, the teams worked on real-life business cases from outside Nestlé's own portfolio.

Every cohort brought great energy, but one group arrived on the morning of day three visibly tired. Ideation was about to begin, and the teams needed every ounce of creative fuel. So Dr. D made them a deal: if they promised to give their all, he would jump into the hotel pool next to the garden where the outdoor ideation was set up. The teams shouted their promise, and Dr. D jumped. The splash kicked off a morning of wild, raucous, high-energy ideation that carried the whole group through the day. In other words, sometimes the best way to wake up a crowd is to make a splash.

By 2010, close to 200 middle managers and brand managers, most of Nestlé (Thai)'s English-speaking middle management layer, had been through the bootcamp. The real payoff came two years later. In 2012, Nestlé (Thai) invited Thinkergy to run our biggest X-IDEA project yet: 11 product categories, 33 innovation challenges, and more than 14,000 raw ideas. Most members of the 11 innovation teams were bootcamp alumni. Nestlé's teams didn't have to learn X-IDEA. They already spoke it, and they delivered outstanding results. Ultimately, the best preparation for a breakthrough project can be a bootcamp held years before.

Do you want your people ready to innovate the moment a big challenge arrives? Contact us to find out how an X-IDEA Creativity Bootcamp may help your managers discover their creative confidence, learn a shared innovation language, and turn it into breakthrough results when it matters most.