Traditionally, innovation has been centrally invested, which is no longer acceptable in a world where configurability and flexibility are key factors for success. Here's how the Police Department has invested innovation organization-wide. 

Innovation as a mindset 

To invest innovation organization-wide, you want to implement innovation as a mindset in every employee. This means that each of the more than 60,000 police employees learns to recognize opportunities for innovation themselves, knows the route to bring the idea to practice and has the confidence that it can actually be applied. 

Knowledge Transfer

To implement innovation as a mindset on a large scale, knowledge transfer is central. Thus, a training course was developed and made scalable by deploying an online learning environment. 

This training was developed entirely in innovation style: within three months, three Focus Sprints were run with a diverse project team. A Focus Sprint is a power workshop that acts as a kick-off for a new idea. 

Impact

It reinforces our view that you don't apply innovation by giving a one-time workshop or seminar. You achieve large-scale innovation by making employees within every layer of the organization aware of how innovation works and especially how they can pragmatically apply this themselves in their daily work. For the Police, this meant developing a training course, knowledge transfer and an online learning environment,