1. jfieb, Oct 7, 2015EditDeleteReport

   #33Reply
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   jfiebMember

   • Doni.......................................

   HOW IDEAS ARE CREATED AT RUNTASTIC – DAY OF NEW IDEAS
   Runtastic Insights | 14.10.2015
   
   
   Every first Thursday of the month is a very special day for us Runtastics. It is the Day Of New Ideas – or as we lovingly call it, our DONI. On this special day the whole company presses pause on their regular activities and routines to collaborate on exploring new ideas, creating something new or improving something already in existence.
   
   
   
   DONI was first introduced in 2012 and has been held ever since. While there have been changes through the years, it has always remained an integral part of Runtastic. DONI has resulted in many cool projects and improvements for the company, like a treadmill with a desk for laptops (allowing employees to exercise and workat the same time), the integration of a new programming language (Swift) for our iOS team or Runtastic’s team page (an interactive room plan in which you can see where every employee is seated in the office including contact details and photos).
   
   To give you a first-hand experience, we talked to one of our Runtastics about her experience with DONI. Marlene is doing an internship in Human Resources at the moment and participated in DONI for the first time last month. The first time she heard about it she got really excited: “What a cool idea to step away from your daily tasks for a while and focus on new ideas, improvements, inventions and changes, no matter how farfetched they might sound.”
   
   Setting a foundationThree days before every DONI, all ideas are collected so that everybody can choose the project they want towork on beforehand. Anyone can share their ideas. It could be a thought that has been floating around in your head for quite some time and that you now want to put into practice, a project that has been worked on before or something completely new. There are no limits to the topics – they just have to be somehow related to Runtastic. Luckily, our staff are full of ideas, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t come up with a project yourself. You can just join one of the other project teams.
   
   
   
   It may even be the case that there are so many interesting ideas that it is hard to decide which you want to workon, like it was for our intern Marlene: “It wasn’t easy for me to choose. I mean, would you rather help create an office wish list, make a really cool video about Runtastic or work on collaborations with interesting companies?” We agree, making choices can be difficult!
   
   Let the games begin
   When DONI finally starts, all Runtastics meet in our lunch area at 8:00 am (yes, we all fit in there – no, it’s not easy). Stefan, our Head of iOS Development and basically the father of DONI, quickly goes through the topics to make sure everybody is assigned to one. It is also a chance for last minute project changes. Then the magic starts happening and the teams get together, grab a coffee
   
   
   The S Johnson coffee house, exchange of ideas, in practice here, and QUIK is in the coffee house too now...that swimming app may get added to the Moment, it IS waterproof, why not show the Apple device in its weak spots...you can't take it for a swim....
   and choose a place to work. A team mostly consists of three to five people and often includes colleagues from different departments, so you also get the chance to work with and get inspired by people you do not get to see that often during your normal work day.
   
   
   
   Marlene’s team for example consisted of Backend Development, Advertising, Translations, Customer Support and Human Resources – so it was a pretty diverse mix. Since all team members were quite new to Runtastic, it was the first DONI for all of them. “Working with people from different departments creates a really unique working atmosphere,” Marlene reported.
   
   Turning thoughts into actionNow it is time to get started and try to develop a project as far as you can on one DONI. Each team is free to organize the work the way they want. One idea can lead to another and the output can be entirely different than what you had in mind at the beginning.
   
   
   
   
   
   Unfortunately, Marlene and her team’s project came to an end quite soon. Due to legal questions, they had to abandon their plan of collaborating with other companies. “We were all a bit disappointed,” Marlene said, “after all, we had been looking forward to working on this project.” Still, they tried to make the best of it and decided to split up and join different projects. Since everybody at Runtastic is really open and nice, it was not hard for them to find a new group to work with and in the end they were all quite satisfied with their new teams and topics.
   
   We proudly present…At about 3:30 pm, people start to present their results. Every team has exactly three minutes to do so and that is a challenge in itself. It is always really exciting to see what the other teams have come up with. DONI finally ends with pizza and the chance to talk to colleagues about their projects, how their day went and what they think of the different outcomes.
   
   
   
   At Runtastic you can always give your input and bring your ideas to the table, whether you are an intern or a team lead. This is even truer on DONI. Marlene definitely enjoyed her first DONI: “It is a unique opportunity to create something new, to work with different people and to think outside the box. I think it is a very beneficial experience, one which you don’t often find in Austrian companies.” She is already looking forward to participating in the next DONI.
   
   Do you have some ideas we should definitely pursue on the next DONI? Tell us in the comments!
   
   HR Team
   The Runtastic HR Team has significantly grown throughout the past months in order to recruit more and more proactive, motivated and skilled employees from all over the world. The talents we are looking for should identify strongly with our corporate values and intercultural spirit. On our blog, we want to give you insights into the working atmosphere of Austria’s most successful start-up and highlight the various benefits of working for such a dynamic company!
   
   View all posts by HR Team »

    

   jfieb, 18 minutes agoEditDeleteReport

   #34Reply
3. 

   jfiebMember

   New

   Keep the DONI item on your mind. Realize that QUIK's talented algo chefs can make custom Beta algos for any hware that comes out of Runtastics DONI.
   
   Commentary. Adidas really did well for their ecosystem with their purchase of Runtastic. Everything points to them being exactly what S Johnson would want them to do...they are a TEXT book for his ideas...
   
   
   
   Chance Favours the Connected Mind
   by Tim Kastelle
   
   
   
   Steven Johnson is a fantastic author, and his next book is about innovation. It is called Where Good Ideas Come From, and it comes out next month. It is the result of a few years of study, where he has investigated creative, innovative environments. He explains the key points from the book in this TED talk:
   
   
   
   There are a few key points that are important for people trying to encourage innovation within organisations:
   
   

   1. Ideas are networks: Johnson maintains that innovative ideas at their most basic level are the result of new, novel connections within the mind. Just as important is the environment in which people are working. Those that regularly come into contact with people having diverse interests and viewpoints are more likely to come up with innovative ideas. Innovation = Connections – one of the key themes that we repeatedly come back to here.
   2. Runsastic
   3. A team mostly consists of three to five people and often includes colleagues from different departments, so you also get the chance to work with and get inspired by people you do not get to see that often during your normal work day.

   
   

   • If we want to encourage innovation, we need to design workspaces to support it: this conclusion follows directly from the first point. If good ideas depend on interactions between people, we need to take a network view when we design the spaces in which we’ll work. How can we regularly interact with those that are working on different problems? How can we encourage diverse viewpoints? The physical space has a significant impact on these issues, and we need to take this into account.

   
   Runtastic
   
   Runtastic’s team page (an interactive room plan in which you can see where every employee is seated in the office including contact details and photos).
   

   • Good ideas are more likely to result from slow hunches: one of the points that Johnson makes is that even when an idea seems to come to us in a flash of inspiration, it usually actually has a longer history behind it. He uses the example of Darwin, who in his autobiography says that the idea for natural selection came to him in a flash one day while he was reading Malthus. However, recent research based on his notebooks shows that the theory had been developing for months prior to that.

   Johnson closes the talk with a great story – he tells how GPS developed from the work of two guys that were initially just curious about whether or not they could track the signals from Sputnik. They figured that out. Then they figured out how to use the doppler effect to figure out where Sputnik was. And through a series of similar small steps, we ended up with GPS.
   
   The GPS story demonstrates how ideas generate interactively, and how they can have wildly unexpected outcomes once you execute them. It is a great innovation story – and it shows how chance favours the connected mind.
   
   Note: Here’s another video that has been made to promote the book. It is shorter than the TED video, and uses a completely different set of examples. Both are worth watching. I’m looking forward to the book!
   
   
   I don't think its just chance...the match is almost an exact copy, S Johnson has a fan of his work at Runtastic, who has gone and built the foundations of their company of his precepts. They have been successful and will NOT stop, and we are in store for a great ride.
   They can help Adidas make up any ground they have lost and then some. Adidas, just leave them alone send people to DONI and listen and then execute.
   
   Runtastic is a company that S Johnson can use as an example...really like this.