Personal Development
With Swisscom Kickbox, our employees can start and grow their innovative idea at any time and very easily. They receive a starting balance of CHF 1,000, 20% of their working time for 2 months and a personal coach. Today I'm talking to Mauro about his idea to make virtual reality meetings a reality.
Mauro, good to see you in real life again. Thanks to your Kickbox project "XRMeetings", you've spent a lot more time virtually than most of us in recent months. And today you reach a new milestone. But first, what is your idea about?
Absolutely, I'm infatuated with the topics around VR, avatars and metaverse! The goal of XRMeeting is to make working in a virtual space as good or even better than working in the office. Imagine the following: a virtual room, your avatar, slides, whiteboards, notes, post-its, virtual objects. And now add your virtual colleagues and you're in the middle of an XRMeeting, regardless of whether you're using a mobile phone, laptop, augmented or virtual reality glasses.
Exciting and as we all know now, VR is certainly a topic with a future! How did your Kickbox journey go?
It was... exciting, lots of ups and downs, new iterations of the idea and new forms, physical prototypes and then, of course, virtual ones. But let's start from the beginning: when I underwent shoulder surgery in 2020 and had to sit at home, I rediscovered VR, having previously had contact with the technology during my studies. I thought to myself: "You know what Mauro? It would be great to establish VR at Swisscom." And that's how I started my Kickbox. With hardly any budget for two pairs of glasses, but with a lot of motivation for new ideas, I gave it a try. I was able to bring virtual reality to life in a physical room with 2-3 people at a time. In just two days, more than 50 people visited me and gave me consistently positive feedback.
That was a brilliant start - what happened next?
The next stage is the blue prototype phase. Here I was able to equip more than 40 sets of glasses for a wide variety of teams, from Banking, to Learning Experience, to Security. Oh, and I should also mention that my two teams, one in Switzerland and a second in Rotterdam, have regular exchanges in VR, as we didn't want to travel to Rotterdam every week. For me personally, it was a super exciting trip. I learnt a lot in the "Design Thinking" and "Lean Startup" divisions. XRMeetings was my baby during the whole Process and I was able to take full responsibility - I really appreciated that! XRMeeting is now an established project, with a continuous growth of enthusiasts, helpers and five core people. We have committed stakeholders, our own budget and big plans for scaling.
It really is a tremendous benefit that you and the team have shown in recent months. With this setup and the aforementioned growth potential, it is a pleasure and an honour for me to award XRMeeting as a GoldBox! This puts you in the Olympus of Kickboxers who manage to validate, test and scale their idea! Congratulations on this!
Huge thanks to everyone who took the plunge to be part of the journey with a VR headset, the teams who stuck with it throughout, the learning squad for their full commitment and Kickbox for believing in me!
Swisscom employees can easily start and grow their innovative idea at any time with Kickbox. The physical box contains
a starting credit of CHF 1,000
20% of the working time for 2 months
a manual explaining the idea validation process and providing valuable tips
In the multi-stage process, you will be accompanied by a coach to drive your idea forward, learn a lot and, in the best case, make your idea really big!
You can find more information on the Kickbox Program here.
Head of Intrapreneurship Swisscom Kickbox
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