Here at MindTree, innovation, knowledge sharing, and collaboration is a way of life. It extends through all three of our DNA elements, beginning with imagination, extending into action, and culminating in joy. We believe that the human ability to create new knowledge and lead with ideas is central to personal as well as business success.
We have received the honor of being the number one ranked most admired knowledge enterprise (MAKE) in India in a 2007 study conducted by Teleos and the Know Network. We have successfully harnessed the creative energies of MindTree Minds and filed for several patents. How did we get here? - By building a unique knowledge ecosystem. We understand that such an ecosystem is an interplay of various enablers and tools, that cater to human ingenuity. At the central core, we are driven by our DNA and CLASS values. We believe that MindTree Minds live these values by concurrently existing in four “spaces”, and use these spaces to grow, build their capability, and impact the customer.
MindTree’s Knowledge Eco System is very thoughtfully cultivated and nurtured. The eco system is made up of four different spaces, physical, virtual, social and mind space; that collectively bring about a culture of knowledge creation and dissemination in the organization.
Physical space
The physical space is our workplace which provides visual stimuli and is a source of inspiration to our people. We have paid special attention to the workplace to make it conducive to the needs of the knowledge worker and facilitate creativity, openness and transparency. Paintings from children of the Spastic Society of Karnataka adorn the walls to create a vibrant feel, and there are many public spaces meant to facilitate chance interactions and planned interactions. Innumerable writable surfaces allow for spontaneous ideation and creative expression. Open floor plans and community areas allow for spontaneous and planned gatherings that stimulate conversations.
Virtual space
The virtual space is defined by the powerful collaborative systems that are available to our people online, and allows them to blog, get connected, use wikis, generate ideas, have discussions, or even collaborate in building innovative TechWorks (reusable blocks) for the company. So whether you’re seeking knowledge, trying to find an expert, expressing an opinion, building a patentable idea, or doing project work, systems are available to support virtual collaborative needs. The virtual space has tools such as Open Mind, Project Space and Neuron that help Minds collaborate and generate ideas.
Open Mind
Open Mind is a unique system that allows for people to collaboratively work on software ideas. Similar to Open Source, MindTree Minds can put their software ideas, vision and passion to work and bring real tangible outputs called TechWorks (reusable components, libraries, frameworks, utilities, tools.) This is not just a repository, but allows for collaborative IP creation, and evolution of TechWorks, and reuse as well. Almost all TechWorks are created by MindTree Minds on their own time voluntarily, and over 100 such TechWorks teams exist in OpenMind. 75% of the company headcount is registered in OpenMind.
Project Space
ProjectSpace is one of the most powerful collaborative systems built specifically for project execution. It includes facilities for all of a team’s knowledge needs including release management, idea management, continuous knowledge capture, sotware reuse within account, document management, issue handling, action item tracking, surveys, discussions, etc. Over 75% of the company headcount is registered in ProjectSpace.
Neuron
A system “Neuron” and related Idea Nurturing Processes are deployed to ignite continuous improvement and innovation from any corner of the company. This covers the end to end lifecycle of an idea from inception to deployment, and supports the patenting process as well. This allows for idea requests to be generated and allows for collective transformation of ideas through participation from MindTree Minds (by wearing Six Thinking Hats), and also more formal staged filtering process. Till date, over 21% of submitted ideas have been deployed and eight patents filed. The Innovation ecosystem has been supported by focused training and mentoring on key identified systematic innovation techniques such as TRIZ, Mind Mapping, Six Thinking Hats, 9-Windows, Perception Mapping, etc. Successful case studies have been put together and presented in TRIZCON2007. An Innovation Community exists in MindTree to discover, experiment, share and promote knowledge on creativity and innovation techniques and tools.
The Mind space
The Mind space, while the most intangible, is perhaps the most important. We stress that Minds should have balanced thinking, and become better critical and creative thinkers. We continuously run programs on different creativity tools and techniques, and have communities that specifically are focused on the thinking needs and soft skills of individuals. This ranges from discussions of systems thinking, to use of techniques like TRIZ, MindMapping, and Six Thinking Hats, to personal effectiveness, to cultural sensitivity.
We have deployed many processes, policies, and practices that further support the ecosystem as defined above. And in the true spirit of innovation, we continue to endeavor to innovate with respect to this ecosystem itself. To underscore the importance we place on this, we have created a dedicated knowledge management function to undertake all related activities.
Social space
The social space is where MindTree Minds build their social networks and relationships with other MindTree Minds. We have over 45 knowledge communities in MindTree covering different technical and non-technical domains which meet to share tips and techniques, discuss latest market or technology trends, brainstorm on specific problems, or just explore and experiment. We also have our annual TechFest, Osmosis, which brings peoplethrough a series of collaborative contests, knowledge safaris, quizzes, and events, over 3 months, and culminates in a final day conference or unconference.
We are the number 1 ranked Indian Knowledge Enterprise in the 2007 MAKE Study. In the entire history of MAKE, no company has ever reached the number 1 rank in a MAKE study in only 8 years of their existence. The MAKE Studies are conducted annually by Teleos in conjunction with the Know Network by an expert panel using the Delphi process across 8 performance dimensions.
We received Silver Trophy at EMPI - Indian Express Indian Innovation Award, 2006.
In September 2006, we received the MAKE Award, ranked 5th In India across industries. We were top ranked in ‘Developing knowledge workers through senior management leadership’, and ranked second in ‘Delivering value based on customer knowledge’, and ‘Creating an enterprise knowledge-driven culture.’ In the entire history of the MAKE studies, other than MindTree, only Google has received a MAKE Award in just 7 years of existence.
In December 2005, we signed up as the first company in India to get our Intellectual Capital rated using the leading methodology (IC Rating) developed by Intellectual Capital Sweden. We came out in the top 12% of companies across industries rated world-wide, and received an ‘A’ rating in both effectiveness and renewal of intellectual capital.
