An Innovation Cup to encourage ideas

General Article

Numbered cup, signed by center president, director, recognizes and rewards small innovations

Graphics on the limited-edition cup depict the cell cycle from Dr. Lee Hartwell's Nobel Prize-winning work. Photo by Todd McNaught

Despite working in different parts of the center, Christian Chandler in Shipping and Receiving, Dennis Means in Facilities Engineering and Alyssa Smith in Public Health Sciences share something in common. Each is an Innovation Cup award winner for coming up with ideas that resulted in savings of time and money.

Chandler, a material handling manager, created a self-service package-mailing center for employees. Means, chief engineer, turned a "cold-room" lab into a "warm-room" facility within 24 hours, saving $10,000 in engineering costs. Smith, a program assistant in the Women's Health Initiative Coordinating Center, devised a way to use the WHI staff Web site to post materials for the center's twice monthly conference calls. This eliminated the need to copy and send materials to 27 WHI committee members located across the United States.

Small solutions are key

The Innovation Cup was unveiled to 160 administrative managers at their fall 2004 conference as a means to recognize new approaches to work. Managers are to award their cups throughout this next year to anyone they see approaching work in different and creative ways. About 50 of the coffee tumblers have been handed out since.

Impetus behind the Innovation Cup was a desire to recognize and reward small innovation, according to Kim Wells, organizational development advisor.

"Small is key. Small innovations are the kind of innovations that take place when staff think about solutions to nagging problems or ways to go about their jobs without creating extra steps and bureaucracy," she said.

High-quality cup

The high quality metal and plastic cup features exterior graphics showing the cell cycle from president and director Lee Hartwell's Nobel-winning work. Inside, the cup is lined with a protected graphic of color microscope images of cells provided by Dr. Paul Lampe's lab.

"We chose those pictures because the science here is incredibly innovative," Wells said. "It reminds staff that they work in an environment where people are always exploring new ideas."

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Recognize a Colleague

If you recognize a worthy colleague with an Innovation Cup, contact Kim Wells at kwell@fhcrc.org to put your award on record.

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