Young Innovators Council (YIC) is the voice of young people at Northern Gas Networks. Its aim is to provide young people’s perspectives and help ensure young people’s thoughts and opinions are put at the heart of our decision making through meaningful and relevant engagement with our future customers.
We wanted to understand what innovation means to the YIC, and what the YIC’s priorities are for the future of innovation at NGN. We also wanted to spend some time looking at where the YIC think NGN should focus its innovation funds, and to establish a set of principles that can create a manifesto to underpin NGN’s decision making around innovation, mindful of the priorities and needs of our future customers.
Key Principles
You said that NGN should use the values identified by the YIC to inform an updated set of 5 key principles/objectives designed to deliver improvement through innovation as part of our new strategy.
Given the feedback from the group around how we should prioritise our spending to focus on Whole Energy Systems & Decommissioning, this is a principle which will apply to our remaining RIIO2 & forthcoming RIIO3 Strategy to deliver projects that focus on those areas as a priority, whilst maintaining a balanced approach.
Future Innovation Strategy
You explained your desire to be kept informed, and told us to keep as many parties as possible informed of project progress and outcomes. This includes outline thinking for our new innovation strategy that starts 2026 – 2031.
It is key to ensure that people are at the centre of all innovative solutions, taking an “innovating with, in contrast to innovating for” strategy. We are taking this on board, and have been looking to improve for 2024 & beyond – especially when it comes to sharing lessons learnt and presenting project outcomes to ensure new ideas are been developed in collaboration with our key stakeholders.