Our first hack event saw staff from across the company take part in collaborative projects as part of a staff training day.
The ‘Hack’ event was designed to breed a creative environment for collaboration, allowing staff to work on a project of their choice and to utlise the skill sets of a broad team. The brief was simple, in fact it was one word? Disrupt.
Staff from the creative studio, account management and digital teams were split into five groups, each with four members. The briefing session elaborated on the brief to give context and some suggested avenues.
As part of the session we looked at companies and industries that have been or are disruptive. They included the likes of :
- Uber which is disrupting the taxi market – offering a technology led model to aid transportation.
- Square which is disrupting the merchant banking system by offering card readers connected to smart devices combined with industry low transaction fees.
- Airbnb which takes hotels out of the picture by giving a platform to anyone wanting to rent a spare bed or property to travellers.
- Budget gyms which provide heavy competition in the leisure market, basing their business model solely on a low cost offering.
Disruption is arguably inevitable. Look back at most industries and products and the disrupted was once the disruptor. Square is to paypal what paypal was to the banking industry 10 years ago. Go back further and the Barclay card changed the face of transactional loans with the launch of a credit card. Disruption is innovation and often it is driven by either technology or price. As is often the case technology still plays a role in pricing models by streamlining process or offering new insight to drive down costs.
So, armed with a mission to ‘disrupt’ our five teams dispersed, brainstormed, researched, designed and came up with five projects which were presented back to a judging panel. Some came polished some a little rough around the edges, but all sought to solve, innovate or change.
Here’s a round up of the projects:
TEAM GECKO
Team members: Max, Ana, Hayley, Brent
Project name: MusicMelee
In short: MusicMelee will solve music disputes by allowing everyone to contribute to a singular continuous playlist from their own device instantaneously
In depth: The MusicMelee sevice forms a network between all enabled devices in a social situation and requests other platforms (Spotify, iTunes, Soundcloud etc.) to stream music to a master device which is connected to the soundsystem in an order defined by a communal playlist. Each device acts as a remote playlist compiler connected to all the other devices allowing the full music collection?of the entire group to be accessed without unplugging the soundsystem at any point.
TEAM SQUIRREL
Team members: Dan, Eva, Martin, Sean
Project name: FitNet
In short: A gym network consisting of Bigwave clients
In depth: Designed to partner together leisure and cultural trust across the UK, FitNet aims to foster a network of gyms and leisure facilities where membership to any provider allows access to any of the network facilities. The network would be backed by a website, app and marketing materials and would support the growth of a national leisure network. Aims of the network would also include facility reviews, benchmarking and joined up campaigns.
TEAM PANDA
Team members: Joseba, Liam, Laura, Ronnie
Project name: VCard
In short: A virtual business card for the film and theatre industry based on a smart phone and linked to other App users and presented in the same vein as the old ‘index card’ system.
In depth: The self-employed market in the film and theatre industry is constantly on short-term contracts.?Networking and contacts within this industry are vital but unlike the more efficient B2B folk, scraps of paper and tatty business cards are constantly mislaid. VCard aims to solve this by providing a way to store and retieve contacts. Due to the transient nature of the job there is a constant need to update CV’s, which could be done and viewed via a link on the Virtual Business Card. QR codes would allow teams to instantly collect all attendee cards in one go.
In short: A virtual business card for the film and theatre industry based on a smart phone and linked to other App users and presented in the same vein as the old ‘index card’ system.
In depth: The self-employed market in the film and theatre industry is constantly on short-term contracts.?Networking and contacts within this industry are vital but unlike the more efficient B2B folk, scraps of paper and tatty business cards are constantly mislaid. VCard aims to solve this by providing a way to store and retieve contacts. Due to the transient nature of the job there is a constant need to update CV’s, which could be done and viewed via a link on the Virtual Business Card. QR codes would allow teams to instantly collect all attendee cards in one go.
TEAM MONKEY
Team members: Tim, Karlie, Rebecca, James
Project name: Moneyspinner
In short: A FREE service directory to put local people in touch with others in their community who can offer a small service for a fee.
In depth: People would receive ratings and reviews according to their services. Services would include: gardening, odd jobs – DIY, babysitting, dog walking, cleaning/ironing, window cleaning. A paid for version of the service to be used by qualified professionals such as electricians, plumber, carers etc
TEAM KOALA
Team members: Wayne, Erika, Luke, Nick
Project name: Qskip
In short: An app to save time on lunch breaks by allowing people to order coffee and food on the go and simply skip the queues
In depth: With a target market oftown/city centre retail and office based workers, aged: 18 – 45? with a disposable income the Qskip app allows the preordering of food or drink from selected vendors. Payments can be taken through the app. The order would be ready for collection at the time specified thus allowing you to skip the queues. Revenue is generated via a small transactional charge and advertising revenues would come from companies being able to promote themselves.
The winning team (by just two points) was Team panda for their Vcard concept. By targeting a specific audience Team Panda had come up with a solution that many in the target market would identify with. This was backed up with some strong research through a survey of the target audience. A good logo proposal and additional artwork to show a demo product gave Team Panda the edge. The Q and A session identified a few potential issues to overcome from revenue streams to copyright or confusion in the brand name already being synonymous with mobile phone contacts but in all the Panda’s just clinched the prize – an extra day of holiday for each team member. Well done Team Panda!
Disruption shows us how industries, and companies in particular, can’t afford to sit still in an increasingly technology led marketplace. At Bigwave Media we’ve invested over the years in new technology and systems to ensure we continue to drive forward and lead on innovation. Our cost model and service delivery quickly established us a market leader when we first launched the company, since then we launched the first mobile app in the Leisure Trust sector and recently invested heavily in a new proofing system we call Proofhub and OnDemand. Proofhub enables clients to proof artwork quicker, easier and more collaboratively while OnDemand gives client a system to self generate on-brand artwork in a couple of clicks.
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