The ONCE has just launched the fourth edition of the ONCE Innova 2025 Internal Challenge, with the aim of promoting the talent of those who are part of the organization and putting it at the service of innovative solutions, within the framework of World Creativity and Innovation Day, celebrated on April 21.
This innovation challenge is an intra-entrepreneurship program held every two years aimed at ONCE employees and members, with the goal of fostering their talent and creativity, inviting them to present innovation proposals, as detailed by its promoters.
Therefore, they will compete in four categories: improvement in the quality of life of people with blindness or visual impairment; transformation and enrichment of the workplace at ONCE; innovation in the products and services offered by the Organization; and a new category focused on ONCE centers, to promote local innovations and solutions tailored to the specific needs of each center.
«In ONCE centers, our employees and members know aspects that can be improved. With this new category of the Challenge, we want them to offer us possible solutions that are innovative and transform the functioning of our organization,» says ONCE Secretary General Jorge Íniguez.
The Challenge call is open to all ONCE members and employees over 18 years old, who can participate individually or as part of a team with a maximum of five collaborators. Among all the projects submitted, the jury will select up to three finalists for each of the four categories, from which a winning project will emerge in each one.
The winning projects will be implemented as innovation pilots at ONCE, which will assume the funding and coordination of the projects, implementing them under a collaborative creation and development approach, allowing the participants who submitted them to also be involved, if they wish, in that development process, to provide them with an enriching experience.
The registration and submission of proposals for this fourth edition begins on April 21 and will run until June 1, 2025. In the following month of July, the finalists will be announced, who will move on to the conceptualization and prototyping workshops phase, held between July and September. Finally, the gala to select the four winning projects will take place next October.
Throughout its history, participants in the challenge have gone from 51 proposals in the first edition to 277 in the last one, held in 2023. Precisely, ONCE dedicates the coupon of this April 21, World Creativity and Innovation Day, to inclusive innovation.
According to ONCE’s General Director, Ángel Sánchez, «people are the engine of this Organization, they are the ones who know their needs best, who face challenges every day, and who can provide the best solutions. What better than to bring them together, work together, and turn those ideas into real projects? The ONCE Innova Internal Challenge is a unique opportunity to innovate from within, collaborating, sharing, and ensuring that ONCE continues to grow with the talent of those who make it possible.»
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