Exago’s partner ASO Company brought together over 100 innovation and human resources managers and some of Turkey’s leading firms – such as Siemens, LinkedIn and Vodafone – for its Corporate Innovation and Intrapreneurship Conference, this month in Istanbul. At the event, Exago’s Idea Market software offered grounds for debate on open innovation best practices.

Aylin Olsun, managing partner of ASO Company, says, ‘This conference has shown us that it is possible and desirable for big brands and companies to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset to stay nimble and innovate faster. Tools such as Idea Market can help them build up and widen capabilities to find new and better solutions and become more appealing to the most talented employees.’

With the Millennium Generation bringing businesses new challenges and ‘dreaming of doing things and work they feel can have a real impact’, attracting and retaining top talent has become more demanding, Olsun explains. ‘Corporate innovation and intrapreneurship programmes can provide companies with the opportunity to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions while creating a strong employer brand and strengthening the organisation’s innovation capacity.’ These structural changes only become possible with leadership, cultural change and human resource evolution.

Throughout the conference, participants were invited to get actively involved and share experiences and concerns about how innovation projects can adjust to existing corporate structures. Inspiring start-ups also presented their models for new ways of working and making internal cultures evolve. Social intrapreneurship and its impact on motivations and methods to align intrapreneurship programmes with corporate operations were some of the topics addressed.

One of Exago’s newest partners, ASO Company is a leadership management and human resource consultancy platform specialising in leadership, D&I and corporate entrepreneurship. The company provides solutions and services for leadership and cultural change.