We are making great progress on our USA Innovation Hub! As a quick reminder, Carl Golightly at Columbia Generating Station is leading a project to facilitate open innovation and crowdsourced ideas. Through the Innovation Hub, employees will have the opportunity to work on projects that have a significant impact. They will also have the chance to collaborate with colleagues and teams from other departments and agencies, opening doors to new technical growth and future project collaborations.

Participating utilities will be able to share their ideas and comment on issues within the network, expanding our pool of operational experience and enabling us to solve industry challenges together.

Columbia Generating Station is serving as a pilot for the program. Starting in June, Energy Northwest’s ENnovation program will be integrated into a new web-based USA Innovation Hub. This new platform utilizes the innovation management software from IdeaScale to create a space where all USA members can:

• Solicit ideas to address their most pressing needs, sharing them within their own team or with others in the USA network.
• Review ideas for potential benefits and associated costs.
• Prioritize ideas for action based on resource availability and business value.
• Allocate appropriate resources to determine rational and best-practice solutions for ideas/issues.

Participants in the USA Innovation Hub, including EN employees, will be able to post ideas, respond to others’ posts, share feedback, and vote for solutions.

Following the pilot effort at Columbia Generating Station, we will be rolling out the project to the other participating USA Members with full implementation targeted for the end of July 2023.

For questions, contact Carl Golightly, Organization Effectiveness, at (509) 377-4066 or Alec McGalliard at USA at (361) 403-4146.