Cisco partnered with Spigit to launch the British Innovation Gateway (BIG) program to encourage innovation among UK small businesses. Spigit designed an open innovation platform to host a competition for the BIG awards. Over 300 startups submitted ideas across categories like internet of things and mobility. The winner was SnapFashion, which combines fashion and technology. The BIG program was very successful in discovering innovative startups and motivating Cisco employees.

1. SPIGIT IS THE INNNOVATION ENGINE THAT DRIVES BUSINESS GROWTH
CASE STUDY
1-925-297-2600 info@spigit.com www.spigit.com
CompanyProfile
Founded in 1984, Cisco Systems was created by a couple working
at the prestigious Stanford University in the San Francisco Bay
Area. Leonard Bosack was the manager of the Computer Science
department’s laboratory; his wife, Sandra Lerner, oversaw the
computers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Bosack
devised a way to connect the LANs in the two departments where
he and his wife worked, 500 yards apart. Unable to sell this new
internetworking technology, the couple started their own business
and called it Cisco Systems. The company name, a shortened form
of San Francisco, was conceived as the couple drove across the
Golden Gate Bridge.
Today, Cisco reigns as a leader in the networking equipment
industry, transforming how people connect, communicate and
collaborate. While this success is impressive, perhaps even more
impressive is Cisco’s unique focus on corporate social responsibility.
TheChallenge
Cisco was eager to raise awareness of their role as an innovation
leader and their active, growing partnership with governments and
global communities. At the same time, the UK government under
new Prime Minister, David Cameron, wanted to partner with a
number of initiatives to encourage the growth of the UK economy
in the small and medium enterprise sector and help drive and
accelerate innovation activity. Concurrently, Cisco UK was bidding
to be a network infrastructure provider to the London 2012 games.
“We were fortunate because of the convergence of all those things
coming together at the same time. As a result, in August of 2009,
Cisco was successful in becoming an Olympic supporter. We were
clear on our initial thoughts of what our legacy from 2012 should
be; we wanted to have a meaningful impact attaching Cisco to
the UK in a big way, making the focus on innovation, skills and
learning,”explained Tom Kneen, Head of Business Development.
To add to the excitement around the Olympics, the Cisco-led
British Innovation Gateway program, also known as BIG, endorsed
by the UK government, was created to support, recognize and
reward excellence in innovation for small businesses. The main
goal was to help accelerate the growth of high-tech businesses—
from startups to SMEs. This was accomplished through contact
and collaboration with other like-minded businesses, BIG partners,
advisors and investors, as well as direct support from Cisco.
ENABLING A “BIG” LEGACY OF INNOVATION
TheImplementation
Spigit’s BIG involvement began in the summer of 2011.“It
was important that the Spigit services team came in at the
earliest possible stage; having them involved early brought the
experiences and good creative ideas that Spigit shared as much as
it brought our team together. By positioning the Spigit innovation
platform at the center of the competition, we wanted to ensure
that the design of the competition and how the platform would
work went hand-in-hand. We also wanted to make sure we weren’t
limiting the competition because of the platform and we weren’t
restricting what the platform could do because of the nature of the
competition,”explained Kneen.
“We wanted to make sure we thought about the needs and
requirements of the startups, themselves, and ensure that we got
a genuine community feel surrounding the competition because
the BIG Awards were just one component of BIG; there were
other very important aspects, and we wanted the community to
understand the full range of what was possible. Spigit’s workshops
taught us how to successfully draw the community into the
competition and how to leverage that community throughout the
competition,”continued Kneen.
Working closely with Cisco, Spigit designed an open innovation
platform to include all the integral features.“There were open
and creative sessions between Cisco and Spigit over a period of
months whilst we designed what the competition would be about
and how it would be represented on the site. It took a period
of time because it was the first time we did this in the UK; we
wanted to get it right and make sure the Spigit team completely

2. whilst we used the Spigit platform in an external way, the center of
things, the whole competition, has really caught the imagination of
Cisco employees who were involved.”
“One of the main reasons we became an official supporter of
the London 2012 Olympics was to leave a sustainable legacy for
UK-based technology innovation. That has a major part to play in
helping the UK to recover from our current economic challenges.
There is explicit commitment to quickly extend the initiative far
and wide across the UK, with the creation of locations in Wales,
Scotland and Northern Ireland.”
To ensure that the platform is performing and hitting all of their
objectives, Spigit built in game mechanics, advanced engagement
and workflow management, and provided innovation strategy
consulting. Cisco is looking to sponsor yearly competitions aimed
at encouraging innovation in small businesses.
AboutCisco
Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that
transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate.
Information about Cisco can be found at www.cisco.co.uk
The British Innovation Gateway (BIG) is a Cisco-led, UK-wide
program that supports technology startups and the upcoming
generation of innovators and entrepreneurs. For more information
about BIG please visit our website www.ciscobig.co.uk
understood what we were about and what we were trying to
achieve,”said Kneen.
For example, Cisco wanted to allow everyone to see the headlines
of all the ideas, which is atypical for an external open innovation
competition. In addition, Cisco wanted registered users to be able
to vote on the submitted ideas. Working with Spigit, Cisco decided
that the users’ favorite idea would carry through to the end of
the competition and would ultimately become one of six finalists.
All this was accomplished using the gaming and virtual market
functionality within the Spigit platform— called the idea market.
“The actual BIG Program was formally announced in January 2011
when John Chambers, Cisco’s Chairman and CEO, met with the
Prime Minister. At that time, Cisco revealed that it would award an
‘iPrize’to the winner of the BIG Awards, and it would launch the
National Virtual Incubator (NVI), a place for young entrepreneurs,
potential investors, designers, academics, and researchers to
network and collaborate with one another. Two months were
spent collecting ideas and getting start-ups to look at the website
and enter the competition. During that time, hundreds of different
start-ups submitted ideas across five categories: Internet of Things,
Big Data, Future Cities, Mobility and Collaboration,”said Kneen.
Outcome
The BIG Awards were a huge success, uncovering some of the UK’s
most innovative start-ups and SMEs. After whittling down more
than 300 entries to 20 semi-finalists, and letting six finalists battle
it out in an exciting‘Dragons Den’style live pitch, Cisco’s first-ever
BIG Awards winner was announced—SnapFashion,“the visual
search engine for fashion”which combined the world of fashion
with technology using a powerful search engine to find equivalent
items of clothing.
Cisco wanted to put the spotlight on innovation and talent
through the awards. The prize was awarded based on the
originality and potential of the idea as well as the quality of the
live pitch. Kneen summarized the experience by saying,“Not only
were we very pleased to discover things we didn’t know through
building and executing the competition and working with Spigit,
but additionally the quality that came out the other end was
quite staggering and we were quite amazed. It’s been a truly eye-
opening experience and very motivational for our own staff. So
AboutSpigit
Spigit’s Enterprise Innovation Platform is used by the world’s leading brands to invent new products and services,
reduce costs and increase employee and customer engagement. Leveraging crowdsourcing, purpose driven social
collaboration, game mechanics and big data analytics, Spigit helps companies identify and execute transformative
ideas from their employees and customers at scale to drive business outcomes.
Over 3000 companies, including leading brands across Retail, Healthcare, Financial, Technology, Government,
Insurance, Utilities and Pharmaceutical industries use Spigit to make innovation a mission critical, repeatable,
predictable and quantifiable business process.
1-925-297-2600
info@spigit.com
www.spigit.com