Creativity Hubs

THESE COMPANIES ARE FINDING NOVEL WAYS TO INSPIRE VITAL BREAKTHROUGHS.

Intuit MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA

The company behind Quickbooks, Turbotax, and Mint supports employees developing new ideas for communities that most need them. Through a project called Mission Hope, Intuit’s customersuccess team is opening new customer service call centers in local economies that have experienced serious downturns. In the past two years, the initiative created more than 900 jobs in Wise, Virginia, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Intuit has recently announced a third center (in Bluefield, West Virginia).

Compass NEW YORK

Real estate brokerage Compass runs on a proprietary tech platform that elicits internal feedback through a digital forum that allows up and down voting from all of its agents and employees. Su estions that make it to the top of the leaderboard become eligible for some of the hundreds of millions in funding the company has committed to developing new initiatives, such as health insurance for agents.

JLL CHICAGO

The commercial real estate services firm built its own cloudbased mobile tool (Idea Stream) to allow all 91,000 global employees to share ideas, best practices, and solutions. All entries are vetted by subject-matter experts and include feedback from employees and examples of client implementations.

Narrativ NEW YORK

The shopping-tech startup is mining data in a way that’s useful (rather than intrusive) for the consumer, creating the world’s largest nonamazon database of product SKUS linked to expert reviews. Narrativ employs machine learning to match products with the expert content written about them. The company cites its focus on innovation as the main reason it boasted a 100% retention rate in its engineering group in 2018.

Proximity Designs YANGON, MYANMAR

Myanmar-based notfor-profit Proximity Designs works with rural farmers in the longisolated country. The company has spent more than $1 million in agricultural research over the past five years. Employees from all departments pursue research in the field, conducting oneon-one interviews, focus-group surveys, and crop studies.

Reverb CHICAGO

To get acclimated, new employees at the used-musicalinstrument marketplace enter a program called the Contest: Each employee is given $1,000 and five weeks to buy and sell as many guitar pedals as they can on the website, using whatever skills they have, whether through beautiful design or effective keywords. The most successful win cash prizes.

SAS CARY, NC

Employees at software company SAS give presentations meant to inspire and motivate their peers. The most effective presenters are featured on the main stage at the company’s annual conference and represent the company externally. One presenter, who gave a talk about transforming special education through AI and language analytics, now sits on the board of a national association for children with special needs.

Sephora SAN FRANCISCO

Sephora Accelerate, an incubation program, is exclusively for female founders in beauty; it includes a weeklong business boot camp, one-onone mentoring from Sephora partners and leaders, grants, and a demo day where founders get the opportunity to present their companies to venture partners and Sephora’s senior team.

Versa CREMORNE, AUSTRALIA

The digital agency develops voiceactivation tools for brands such as Cocacola, Domino’s, Pfizer, and the Red Cross. The company runs an entrepreneurship program for employees, which in just two years has already spawned two new companies: Code Like a Girl and Initio Insurance.

Wetransfer AMSTERDAM

The Dutch filetransfer company does more than just nod to research su esting clear links between diversity and innovation: It boasts an even 50-50 gender split among employees who hail from 38 countries.

All of them get one full “Innovative Friday” each month to work on a project of their choosing, some of which (such as a mobile uploader) have been incorporated into the company’s products.

Xinova SEATTLE

Originally a spin-off of Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectural Ventures, Xinova has created a network of more than 12,000 innovators in 118 countries that clients can tap into as an extension of their own R&D. This brain trust helps develop commercial solutions to particular technical challenges, and network members whose ideas are adopted earn cash, royalties, and equity.