Turning Employee Insight into Enterprise Innovation
An Innovation management process for TC Energy
TC Energy engaged J5 to help its Enterprise Innovation team develop a practical, repeatable process for moving complex challenges from early exploration to tested solutions. Together, we created an innovation methodology that enables teams to define the right problems, generate ideas, develop concepts, and test their most important assumptions before committing significant resources.
Recognizing that the people closest to a challenge often hold the most valuable knowledge, employee participation was embedded throughout the process. Through interviews, workshops, Idea Jams, design labs, prototyping, and an Innovation Gallery, employees from across TC Energy were invited to contribute their perspectives, build on one another’s ideas, and shape solutions grounded in the realities of the organization.
INDUSTRY
Energy & Utilities
CLIENT
TC Energy
WHY IT MATTERS
Innovation becomes more effective when it is something employees can participate in, not a process delivered to them. This work gave TC Energy a structured way to engage people across the company, transform their knowledge into actionable ideas, and progressively reduce uncertainty as concepts moved forward.
By balancing what employees and users need with what is feasible and viable for the business, the process helped TC Energy make more informed innovation investments. It also strengthened internal innovation capability by providing teams with shared methods, decision criteria, and practical tools they could apply to future challenges.
PROCESS HIGHLIGHTS
We designed a four-phase innovation process that guides teams from defining a challenge through ideation, collaborative design, testing, and experimentation.
We engaged employees across TC Energy in a company-wide co-design process, creating multiple opportunities for people to contribute ideas, respond to concepts, and influence how solutions evolved.
Impact
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User Level
Employees were given meaningful opportunities to contribute their expertise and lived experience to challenges affecting the organization.
Collaborative sessions and the Innovation Gallery made innovation more visible and accessible, helping employees see how their contributions shaped emerging ideas.
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Innovation Service Level
The Enterprise Innovation team gained a repeatable methodology, supporting tools, and facilitation approaches for leading future innovation initiatives.
Clear transitions and decision points helped teams synthesize what they had learned and determine whether an idea should pivot, persevere, or stop.
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Organizational Level
TC Energy established a consistent approach for evaluating ideas through the lenses of desirability, feasibility, and viability.
The process created a stronger foundation for employee-led innovation, enabling the organization to explore opportunities collaboratively, reduce risk progressively, and direct resources toward ideas with the greatest potential for impact.