The United Nation has marked April 21st as World Creativity and Innovation Day. While the concept of Creativity and Innovation is open to cultural interpretation, the United Nations has been bold in highlighting creativity and innovation as the true wealth of nations in the 21st century.
“It’s the intellectual assets of our society that are going to help us solve the challenges our children will face”, said Neil Burbidge the CEO of Flint, “whether that be the climate crisis or ensuring that the poorest in the world have equality of opportunity. Flint has the benefit of operating in the ICT industry which of itself is a global equaliser and more often than not a force for good in our society. Our work in this industry has in no small part supported the reduction in commuting and enabled homeworking during Covid. It has also enabled Wikipedia to be accessed in Sub Sahara Africa, with ICT having a clear and proven positive impact on living standards. It’s reported that more than 3.5 billion now have access to a smartphone. That’s a powerful force for good in our world.”
Flint has evolved over the last 20 years from an entirely UK based resourcing business to having a skilled and competent team of over 800 people across more than 15 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Russia, North America, and Africa. The very structure of Flint, which has country managers and senior staff from many of its countries, speaks to the creativity of the business. Opportunities and challenges are addressed by interdisciplinary teams encompassing all the rich diversity of Flint. In addition, Flint invests in training and development and has an apprentice training programme to support growing young staff into the ICT industry.
“Creativity Is Baked Into Our Culture”
Unusually for a service company Flint operates a test bed, to better ensure its service solutions are tested and to enable staff to learn and develop new technical skills. Keith Barker, one of Flint’s founding members, stated, “we have seen enormous technical innovation and change in our industry. With the advent of 5G, network slicing and the variety of software solutions now available to our operator customers we have to keep on top of the technology to continue adding maximum value. Our test bed is a key part of our technical strategy to remain at the front of innovation.”
While in its infancy, Flint operates an idea’s and creativity forum. Onder Savas, who drives the forum, noted that it has captured hacks and innovations from all aspects of the organisation. Onder said, “it’s an open forum democratic and accessible to all staff with the purpose of collecting and capturing the good ideas our colleagues have to improve work and processes and customer outcomes. It’s another marker as to the openness of the Flint team to innovation.”
Returning to Neil it’s clear that Flint has been very successful over the last two decades. “Without the grit and determination to try to listen to our customers and help them in their business needs we would not have grown from our roots. I feel creativity is baked into our culture, principally by always trying to listen that little bit harder to our customers and convert their needs into clear deliverables. That’s our laboratory bench and our key differentiator.”
Happy Innovation and Creativity Day! Good luck with your opportunities & Flint’s here to help. We look forward to talking to you.
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