Great ideas can come from any­where and that was the ap­proach used by TSTT when the com­pa­ny launched its Ideation Chal­lenge for em­ploy­ees and an­nounced the re­sults of win­ners re­cent­ly.In a few short years, TSTT has trans­formed from a phone, mo­bile and In­ter­net com­pa­ny to a com­pre­hen­sive com­mu­ni­ca­tions provider with aug­ment­ed ser­vices like Blink Vig­i­lance Alarm mon­i­tor­ing and Blink En­ter­tain­ment. Now the com­pa­ny is tap­ping in­to the in­ven­tive­ness of staff to find the next great prod­uct idea.

"We are in an in­dus­try that is de­fined by in­no­va­tion. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy has come to un­der­score al­most every as­pect of life so as a lo­cal net­work op­er­a­tor we are not con­tent to just do what oth­er op­er­a­tors are do­ing. We want to make a re­al dif­fer­ence," said TSTT act­ing CEO George Hill.The Ideation Chal­lenge was Hill's brain­child. He felt the com­pa­ny need­ed to con­tin­u­ous­ly find in­no­v­a­tive ways of mak­ing op­ti­mum use of its tech­nol­o­gy in­fra­struc­ture to serve re­al cus­tomer needs.

"Broad­band ac­cess and mo­bile tech­nol­o­gy con­tin­ue to be im­por­tant and they have played their role in mod­ernising T&T. They will con­tin­ue to do that but when you look at more de­vel­oped coun­tries, you re­alise that these are just par for the course. The next steps in­volve ask­ing your­self as an op­er­a­tor 'What can I do with broad­band and mo­bile to make a dif­fer­ence in peo­ple's lives?" Hill says the an­swer lies in de­vel­op­ing prod­ucts that help peo­ple do what­ev­er they are in­ter­est­ed in, eas­i­er and more con­ve­nient­ly.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the win­ning en­tries ad­dressed pub­lic in­ter­ests and con­cerns in health, fi­nance, en­ter­tain­ment and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.TSTT's Sta­cy-Ann Lowe, head of Prod­uct Port­fo­lio Man­age­ment, spear­head­ed the Ideation Chal­lenge and said the tar­get was to get 100 ideas from em­ploy­ees."We re­ceived over 250 en­tries! Staff was re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in fill­ing our in­no­va­tion pipeline and this augers well for keep­ing TSTT rel­e­vant and in touch with prac­ti­cal needs of cus­tomers."

The en­tries se­lect­ed for im­me­di­ate ac­tion were award­ed at­trac­tive in­cen­tives at a re­cent award cer­e­mo­ny. They in­clud­ed first place win­ner Lystra Ser­rette from Blink Sales, Ser­vice and To­ba­go Op­er­a­tion Di­vi­sion, sec­ond placed Arnold Ger­ald from the Fi­nance Di­vi­sion and third, Kar­lene Vil­laroel, al­so of the Fi­nance Di­vi­sion.Three con­so­la­tion prizes were al­so giv­en for sug­ges­tions from Che Keens Du­mas from the Tech­nol­o­gy Di­vi­sion and Ken Smith and Dar­ron Charles, from Blink Sales, Ser­vice and To­ba­go Op­er­a­tion Di­vi­sion.