“The best way to predict the future is to create it”. Peter Drucker’s famous saying sums up the concept of innovation, which is and has always been the driving force for progress, even though it only recently entered our vocabulary.
A culture of innovation is precisely what has enabled Hinojosa Packaging Group to evolve and grow over the past 75 years, adapting to new contexts and social and environmental challenges. Today the company reinforces its commitment to innovation thanks to Hingenia, its first intrapeneurship programme. This is an initiative that seeks to foster a culture of innovation, talent and the convergence of innovative ideas among employees.
Hingenia brings together multidisciplinary teams from within Hinojosa to work together in three innovation challenges set forth by the company’s board of directors. Contemporary challenges relevant to the sector, related to sustainability, to technology or to changes in the market and consumption; challenges which face the industry and which will mark the future of packaging and customer service. The objective is to propose solutions to its buyers in a proactive manner, anticipating the problem and directly offering a solution.
And how does it all unfold? Agile methodology techniques are used in the development of this initiative. Through sprints, the teams attempt to arrive first to the market, offering solutions to the problems proposed. In the first sprint, the intrapreneurs work to understand the problem, they develop ideas to resolve it and lastly, they make a prototype of the idea that they propose to the client through a pitch. The output of the initiative is to generate a minimum viable product, in which Hinojosa could invest to develop and introduce to the market in the next two years. In January 2024 the teams will present their completed projects.
Through this initiative, Hingenia promotes teamwork, entrepreneurship within the company, the development of skills and talent acquisition of the employees. For Mireia García Roca, Corporate Director of Innovation at Hinojosa, “Hingenia is a tool for growth and a valuable and innovative experience for the company, our customers and our employees”.
The initiative offers the possibility to advance in different areas, to get to know and understand market opportunities, to solve a real problem and materialise a solution. “The intrapreneurs have shown commitment and passion over this project, which makes us proud and helps us believe that at Hinojosa there is always space to grow and to develop talent, teamwork and innovation”, concludes García Roca.
Innovation is simply working every day to become better and to improve the world around us. Hingenia attaches a name, a methodology and talent to that goal. In the words of Eric Bacourt, CEO of Hinojosa: “Without innovation there is no entrepreneurship, and without entrepreneurship there is no innovation. When Columbus travelled to the Americas, he had to deal with the Queen’s reluctance, but he had a clear purpose, and he managed to convince a crew to accompany him. Although he left in search of spices, he came back with something better, and this is the most important thing when it comes to entrepreneurship: the conviction that you are going to achieve your goals and that, on the way you will come across barriers, you will jump over them and arrive at a place that may be different than the place you first had in mind. Successful entrepreneurs are those who never give up and keep going until the end.”
