NEC

Capturing the open innovation journey through brand storytelling and employee engagement

Designing circular services to extend the electronics life cycle

Challenge

NEC were looking to communicate their new business development division’s story and activities around innovation in a collaborative way.

Since establishing its new business development activities in 2013, NEC has challenged itself with business development through various approaches, including co-creation with partners and recruiting talent from a broad range of industries. However, these initiatives previously existed in isolation, preventing company-wide communication of their efforts.

In 2024, NEC embarked on rebranding its new business development division to consolidate these initiatives company-wide and unify their messaging around “Open Innovation.” Fabric was selected as the partner to help define NEC Open Innovation’s identity and communicate that across internal and external messaging.

In developing this messaging, NEC particularly emphasised sharing their commitment with internal members and aligning perspectives across the organisation. Fabric’s challenge therefore was to explore how to involve
employees in drawing out and articulating NEC's vision.

Approach

We engaged NEC employees to develop NEC’s values and vision for open innovation in a multi-phase co-creation process.

Our team listed the elements that needed to be clarified during message development: the raison d'être of new business development, their aspirational vision, and core values. From there, we designed employee surveys, interviews, and workshops to explore each element in depth, collecting multifaceted insights.

Our approach to insight discovery and message development included:

Analysis of existing data, including past employee pulse surveys
Design and implementation of surveys for new business development division members (80 people)
Interviews with department heads, new transfers from venture companies, and members from other departments
Workshops with new business development division members
(20 people)
Integration of insights and message development from all research

Our approach to insight discovery and message development included:

Analysis of existing data, including past employee pulse surveys
Design and implementation of surveys for new business development division members (80 people)
Interviews with department heads, new transfers from venture companies, and members from other departments
Workshops with new business development division members
(20 people)
Integration of insights and message development from all research

"The future is ours to shape"
— a statement embodying determination as creators of tomorrow.

"The future is ours to shape" — a statement embodying determination as creators of tomorrow.

Based on insights gathered through our research, we crafted a story about what NEC's new business development aims for and values. From multiple potential directions, we worked with the NEC team to identify the key messages to communicate, target audiences, and the tone and manner that truly represents NEC's new business development division. The final shortlisted concepts went through voting and feedback from all members involved in new business development, followed by further refinement.

By involving employees at each step of the process — from insight collection to message creation—we provided them with opportunities to consider their organisation's purpose and aspirational vision, creating moments to share their commitment as active participants in creating the future.

The resulting statement serves both as NEC's call to partners for
co-creation and as a message that fuels employees' own aspirations.

Outcomes

NEC are now equipped with not only improved storytelling, but brand assets as well, designed with co-creation at the core.

Fabric was responsible for content planning and design of the website that serves as the foundation for communicating "NEC Open Innovation” — the new umbrella term for NEC's new business development initiatives. Based on the visual design developed for the website, we created other assets including booklets, T-shirts, PowerPoint templates, and Zoom background images.

These tools—unified by vibrant colours that evoke diverse "co-creation" with partners—bring new cohesion to NEC's ambitious new business development initiatives whilst adding fresh energy that positively challenges conventional expectations of NEC.

NEC's new business development division continues active communication efforts to enhance their industry presence, supported by the new slogan, statement, and assets developed through this project.

This program has been awarded the Good Design Award 2025.