The challenge: capturing frontline intelligence in a decentralised group
VINCI Energies is a global player in energy and digital solutions, organised into roughly 2,200 business units across 55 countries. This decentralised structure is a strength: it enables agility, local responsiveness, and client proximity. But it poses a major challenge for innovation. How do you surface the best ideas when they originate thousands of kilometres from headquarters?
Before implementing a structured approach, improvement ideas often remained confined to their unit of origin. A technician in Brazil might solve a problem that dozens of teams in Europe were also facing, without anyone knowing. Best practices were lost in organisational silos, and cross-functional innovation opportunities went unnoticed.
For VINCI Energies' Innovation Department, the objective was clear: they needed a tool that could operate at group scale while respecting the autonomy of local entities.
Why decentralised groups are a particular challenge for idea management
Traditional innovation programmes struggle in this kind of environment for three reasons. Ideas from the field rarely reach decision-makers who can scale them. When they do, the local nuance is lost: what works on a French construction site is not always directly applicable to a data-centre operation in Southeast Asia. And without a shared system, "innovation" becomes a term that different business units define differently, which makes it hard to compare, prioritise, or scale successes across the group.
This is the operating reality for any decentralised group of significant size: the engineering company with sites in 12 countries, the energy services group with hundreds of business units, the multinational manufacturer with autonomous regional divisions. The structural problem is the same. The intelligence is distributed; the system to surface it is not.
The solution: a participative innovation platform adapted to group complexity
VINCI Energies deployed Hives.co as their central idea management platform, using several key capabilities.
Multi-entity and multi-language. The platform enables each business unit to launch its own idea campaigns in its local language, while providing a consolidated view at the group level. An innovation manager in Paris can see trends emerging simultaneously in Brazil, Germany, and Sweden.
Field accessibility. In a group where most employees work on construction sites, industrial facilities, or at client locations, mobile access is essential. Hives.co allows anyone to submit an idea in seconds from their smartphone, without needing to connect to the corporate network.
Targeted campaigns by strategic priority. Rather than opening a generic suggestion box, VINCI Energies organises idea collection around concrete challenges: reducing carbon footprint, worksite safety, maintenance process optimisation, and digitalisation of field interventions. This targeted approach dramatically improves the quality of contributions.
The platform was configured to mirror the group's structure rather than to force a uniform working model. Each business unit can run its own campaigns against local challenges, while group level can launch cross-cutting campaigns on shared themes such as energy efficiency, digitalisation, or safety. Ideas are tagged in ways that make them searchable across the whole organisation, so a solution from one entity can be discovered by a team a thousand kilometres away struggling with the same problem.
How the programme runs in practice
The programme operates as a combination of open submissions and targeted campaigns. Open submissions let any employee propose an improvement when it occurs to them. Targeted campaigns ask specific questions tied to strategic objectives, for example "how can we reduce energy consumption on our clients' sites by 15 percent?" or "what new technology are you seeing at clients that we should investigate?"
Every submission goes through a structured qualification workflow. The Innovation Department and business-unit owners review ideas, assess feasibility and strategic fit, and feed back to the submitter. Approved ideas get owners, timelines, and, where relevant, pilot budget. The loop is closed systematically: employees find out what happened to their idea, even when the answer is "no", and why.
Mobile access matters here. A meaningful share of VINCI Energies' workforce is on construction sites, customer facilities, or in the field. An innovation tool that requires logging into a desktop excludes them by default. Hives.co lets these colleagues submit ideas straight from their phone, often at the moment the insight occurs, before the idea is forgotten by the next assignment.
Concrete results at group scale
Deploying Hives.co at VINCI Energies structured what already existed informally, a culture of initiative and continuous improvement, by giving it the tools to scale.
Massive, cross-functional participation. Employees at all hierarchical levels and across all geographies now contribute to the innovation effort. The tool has broken through the linguistic and organisational barriers that previously hindered the flow of ideas.
Identifying shared opportunities across entities. One of the most significant benefits is the ability to identify common challenges across entities that did not previously interact. When three business units in three different countries submit similar ideas, it signals that a topic deserves group-level investment. When a team in the Netherlands solves a problem, a team in Singapore can find the solution through the platform rather than reinventing it.
Accelerating the idea-to-action cycle. Thanks to the built-in qualification workflow, ideas no longer sit in an indefinite queue. Each submission follows a clear path: evaluation, prioritisation, assignment to a project owner, and implementation tracking. Contributors can see what happens to their proposals, which sustains the dynamic of participation.
Customer perspective
Innovation cannot remain the domain of a few experts. At VINCI Energies, every employee on the ground is a sensor for opportunities. Hives.co allows us to transform this collective intelligence into concrete actions.
Innovation Department, VINCI Energies
Keys to success
Respecting local autonomy while creating a common framework. VINCI Energies did not impose a uniform innovation process across all entities. Each business unit retains the freedom to define its own campaigns and evaluation criteria. But using a shared platform ensures that data flows upward and best practices circulate.
Anchoring innovation in operational priorities. Idea campaigns are directly tied to the group's strategic priorities: energy transition, operational excellence, safety, and customer experience. This connection between the participative approach and business strategy gives meaning to every employee's contribution.
Recognising contributors. VINCI Energies has implemented recognition mechanisms for employees whose ideas are implemented. This recognition, whether symbolic or tangible, is an essential lever for maintaining engagement over time.
What other decentralised organisations can take away
VINCI Energies' approach illustrates several principles that apply more broadly to any decentralised group, not only in energy or infrastructure.
Decentralisation does not have to mean fragmented innovation. The right tools preserve local autonomy while enabling group-wide learning. A technician's improvement should be reusable in another country, not lost in the local Teams channel where it was first mentioned.
Mobile access is not a nice-to-have when a large part of the workforce is in the field. It is foundational. Excluding deskless workers from the innovation programme excludes the people closest to the operational realities that matter most.
Qualification workflows that close the loop with every submitter are what drive repeat participation over time. A one-off initiative where nobody hears anything back dies within six months. A systematic programme where people see their ideas go somewhere keeps going.
And anchoring campaigns in strategic priorities, rather than running open-ended "suggestion box" calls, is what turns idea volume into business outcomes. Specificity in the question produces specificity in the answer.
About VINCI Energies
VINCI Energies is a subsidiary of the VINCI Group, a global leader in concessions and construction. With revenue of €20.4 billion in FY2024 and 90,000 employees across 55 countries, VINCI Energies supports clients in implementing energy, digital, and industrial solutions. The company is organised into roughly 2,200 business units, a decentralised structure that fosters agility and field proximity while drawing on the strength of a global group.
