Submitted by: Natalie Wood – River Bend
If you haven’t heard about it yet, the Innovation Competition is an amazing opportunity for NAYGN members you won’t find anywhere else to create and mobilize a new and innovative program that could improve the nuclear energy industry. During the 2014 conference there will be an open session to discuss potential solutions to important challenges or issues that the nuclear industry is currently facing. There will be a competition at the conference to identify the one “Best Innovative Idea”. The winner of the competition will be given the opportunity to pitch their idea or solution to all of the Chief Nuclear Officers during a Nuclear Strategic Issues Advisory Council meeting in August.
There’s nothing better than a competition to get your NAYGN team excited and that’s exactly the tactic that the River Bend chapter is using to get both chapter members and site management involved in the 2014 NAYGN Innovation Competition. The River Bend NAYN chapter members were challenged to form a team to brainstorm on ideas to be presented at the conference. Since it was too late in the game to allow the person with the best idea to go to the conference to present their idea, members were instead given the opportunity to present their ideas to River Bend site management. Presenting the ideas to site management allowed the ideas to be better refined based on management challenge and it provided additional face time between NAYGN members and the River Bend leadership team. The River Bend management team was impressed with the creativity and passion the NAYGN members had for their ideas. Even if the ideas are not selected as the “Best Innovative Idea”, the way has already been paved to implement these ideas on a site level.
It’s not too late to pull your NAYGN chapter together to enter this competition and to show your management team the energy and innovation that exists in your chapter!