Booz Allen has been delivering innovative solutions to clients for over a century, but in 2013, the firm embarked on a mission to effuse an intentional Culture of Innovation throughout the organization.
“The spirit of entrepreneurism and innovation has been at our core since the beginning. And as we looked ahead to the next 100 years, we had an opportunity to freshly infuse innovation in how we approach the market and solve client problems,” says Senior Associate Chris Holmes, one of the Culture of Innovation initiative leaders. “The greatest pool of innovators are our employees—who understand their clients’ missions better than anyone. Employees’ diversity of thought, experience, and expertise are the key to driving innovation. We thoughtfully built a framework to bring this creative diversity together, which provides a new lens to analyze problems. Our culture of innovation empowers employees as creative thinkers and provides unparalleled value for our clients and for any problem we try to tackle.”
For the past 3 years, Booz Allen’s Strategic Innovation Group (SIG) has built and driven this Culture of Innovation framework. We connect people and ideas across the natural barriers of markets, capabilities, and geographic distances. Through focused challenges, and the creation of planned points of collaboration, we’ve established an environment that attracts more of the best ideas and compels our people to connect, contribute, and thrive. Recruiting and retaining a new generation of talent is a priority to stimulate creativity and create original, sustainable value.