FELCO's Project NEXUS Team Wins 2025 Innovation Champion Award

We're proud to announce FELCO's Project NEXUS team as the recipient of On-Off Group's 2025 Innovation Champion Award—recognizing exceptional application of Design Thinking to solve real business challenges.

In a rapidly evolving digital commerce landscape, the Project NEXUS team demonstrated exactly what innovation looks like in practice—embracing uncertainty, challenging assumptions, and moving from insight to action with speed and confidence.

The Challenge: Navigating a Dynamic E-Commerce Landscape

The e-commerce business is anything but static. Consumer behaviors shift quickly, new platforms emerge, and what worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. For FELCO's e-commerce team, this dynamic environment presented both opportunity and challenge.

As Project Sponsor Erik Riola explains, the team recognized they needed a fresh, more structured approach to tap into consumer behavior within this emerging channel. Traditional planning methods weren't keeping pace with the speed of change in digital commerce.

"Given the very dynamic nature of the e-commerce business and the growing opportunities within the digital commerce industry, the team needed a fresh and more structured approach on how to tap into consumer behavior within this emerging channel."
— Erik Riola, Project Sponsor, Project NEXUS

The Approach: From Understanding to Action

What set Project NEXUS apart was their wholehearted adoption of the Design Thinking process. Rather than jumping straight to solutions, the team committed to deep understanding first—and that made all the difference.

The structured approach moved the team through:

• Understanding — Getting close to customers and their actual behaviors in digital channels
• Insights generation — Transforming observations into actionable insights about what customers really need
• Ideation — Generating multiple approaches to scaling the e-commerce business without getting stuck on a single path
• Prototyping — Building quick, testable versions of their ideas
• Immediate testing — Validating approaches with real feedback before committing resources

Critically, this process helped the team avoid what Erik calls "the pitfalls of decision-fatigue"—that paralysis that sets in when there are too many options and not enough clarity about which direction to take.

"The processes of understanding which leads to insights generation, ideation, prototyping and immediate testing allowed the team to explore various approaches to scaling the e-commerce business and avoided the pitfalls of decision-fatigue."
— Erik Riola, Project Sponsor, Project NEXUS

The Vuja Dé Mindset: Seeing the Familiar with Fresh Eyes

One concept that resonated deeply with the team was the idea of "Vuja Dé"—the opposite of déjà vu. Where déjà vu is seeing something new and feeling like you've seen it before, Vuja Dé is looking at something familiar and seeing it with completely fresh eyes.

For the Project NEXUS team, this mindset shift was transformative. Instead of approaching their e-commerce challenges with the same assumptions they'd always held, they learned to question everything—to look at their business, their customers, and their opportunities as if seeing them for the first time.

This approach has become embedded in how the team works. Now, every time they start a new project, they begin with this Vuja Dé mindset—deliberately setting aside what they think they know to make room for fresh insights.

The Impact: A Liberating Realization

Perhaps the most significant outcome wasn't a single project deliverable—it was a fundamental shift in how the team approaches problem-solving.

"Since completing the initiative, the realization that the team can progressively ideate, prototype and test various approaches to achieve the desired results is liberating and helps broaden perspectives."
— Erik Riola, Project Sponsor, Project NEXUS

This is what sustainable innovation looks like. It's not about one great idea—it's about building the capability to continuously generate, test, and refine ideas. The Project NEXUS team now has a repeatable process they can apply to any challenge they face.

Why This Award Matters

The Innovation Champion Award recognizes teams that don't just complete a workshop—they internalize the principles and apply them to create real business impact. Project NEXUS exemplified this through:

• Genuine adoption — The team didn't just go through the motions; they embraced the process fully
• Practical application — They applied Design Thinking to a real, high-stakes business challenge
• Lasting change — The mindset and methods have become part of how they work, not just a one-time exercise
• Broader influence — Their success demonstrates to others in the organization what's possible

Congratulations to Erik Riola and the entire Project NEXUS team. Your work shows what happens when talented people are given the right tools and the freedom to use them.