Knowstlé
A browser plugin turns bookmarks into matches with similar Nestlé projects and experts
A collective intelligence for Nestlé’s organization
- Key fact
- 416 %projected return on investment
- Team
- 6 master students
- Universities
- Hasso Plattner InstituteUniversity of São Paulo
- Disciplines
- Business Administration · Electrical Engineering · IT Systems Engineering · Mechatronics Engineering · Production Engineering
What happened, step by step.
Challenge
Nestlé asked how digital experiences can scale innovation across its global brands. The team narrowed this to better collaboration across the globe during the innovation process.
What the team learned
Silos mean teams pursue the same ideas without knowing, the most critical pain point. Employees are overwhelmed by tools, dislike manual tagging and worry about confidentiality when sharing.
What they built
Knowstlé is a recommendation platform linking similar projects, subject experts and articles to a user's projects. A browser plugin, the cube, lets employees bookmark web pages into projects, which sharpens recommendations and enables team research.
How it evolved
- Step 1An open question forum and project-sharing platform failed: posting openly felt uncomfortable and documenting took too long.
- Step 2Text-embedding similarity grouped items by topic more precisely than term frequency; expert finding was strongly desired.
- Step 3Benchmarking StartupFlow after the InnoHome prototype focused the team on the recommendation system.
Results
- Tested in one-to-one sessions and workshops with Nestlé employees, including the head of innovation in Brazil.
- ProjectedROI near 416 % with break-even in about three months, assuming 0.01 % less double work.
Impact
The team called the concept ready once adapted to Nestlé's IT tools, recommending a start with about 60 innovation-focused employees in R&D and IT.
In their words
I would 100% use it. In the project that I am working on right now, we ask ourselves many times if this has already been done before?
Full project text
The team’s original texts from the project page.
A new system to reduce double work and empower Nestlé’s employees in their daily work.
Challenge
How might we design a solution that leverages digital (technology) experiences to efficiently scale global innovation and foster a trustworthy development of innovation capabilities adapted to Nestlé Global culture? With hundreds of Nestlé's brands across the globe and on multiple continents, it has become essential to keep the entire group connected on various levels. Therefore, fostering intercontinental and regional collaboration through digital channels has become a critical imperative, and the desire has never been stronger, especially in light of recent global events.
Solution
Knowstlé is a platform that empowers Nestlé's employees and creates a collective intelligence. The platform is supported by a browser extension that allows employees to add findings easily to their projects and share them with their colleagues. Based on these findings, we can identify similar projects in the company, connect their project members and recommend useful articles. We tested Knowstlé thoroughly and received great feedback for the idea and the smooth user experience.
Impact
The value of Knowstlé is to save an enormous amount of time for the user. By identifying similarities in projects at an early stage, time and frustration are saved, as there is less double work and therefore less frustration due to the increased transparency. For the user, the most significant value of the platform lies in breaking silos and connecting experts across departments and locations. In addition, saving time through joint research and simultaneous matching with similar projects represent the value proposition for the user.
Watch the team’s pitch.
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From the field to the prototype.
Who built it.
Zoe Hille
Business Administrations
Sebastian Brito
IT-Systems Engineering
Jan Westphal
IT-Systems Engineering
Lorena Fernandez
Electrical Engineering
Almir Ribeiro Couto
Production Engineering
Pedro Luis Bacelar dos Santos
Mechatronics Engineering