ALSEA / STRATEGIC INNOVATION & ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
Alsea is a leading multi-brand restaurant operator in Latin America and Spain, managing over 3,000 units and 67,000 employees across markets including Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, and Spain. With iconic brands such as Starbucks, Burger King, Domino’s, and KFC in its portfolio, the organisation faced the challenge of embedding a stronger innovation mindset across its global leadership. The goal was to create an employee- and customer-focused culture of innovation that could translate into tangible improvements in service, operations, and growth.
(Strategic Innovation)
Approach
Designed a two-day innovation/design thinking workshop for 350 global executives.
Structured activities around problem-framing, ideation, and prototyping.
Formed cross-brand, cross-country teams to promote knowledge-sharing and collaboration.
Facilitated co-creation sessions focused on service improvements, HR recruitment, new processes, and digital opportunities.
Guided teams through rapid prototyping and pitching to ensure actionable outputs.
Impact
Generated 100+ actionable solutions across digital products, customer experience, HR, and internal processes.
Strengthened alignment and collaboration among global leadership.
Innovation backlog created to guide future projects.
Established a foundation for a more open, innovation-driven culture across ALSEA’s ecosystem.
Key activities
Workshop design & Preparation: Developed agenda, tools, and facilitation materials.
Problem Framing & Ecosystem Mapping: Identified critical organisational challenges and shared understanding of key opportunity areas.
Ideation & Co-Creation: Teams generated innovative ideas for digital products, services, HR, and operations, with over 100 solution concepts created.
Prototyping & Pitching: Executives turned ideas into tangible prototypes and presented them, generating a portfolio of solution concepts, storyboards, and prototypes.
Clustering & Prioritisation: Synthesised ideas into thematic categories and actionable next steps, ending with a prioritised innovation backlog for future implementation.
Reflection
This project highlighted the transformative potential of large-scale co-creation. By designing the right structure and guiding diverse leaders through HCD methods, we enabled not just new solutions, but a shift in mindset towards collaboration and innovation.
