/ all work
/ part of: innovation communication
the challenge
Following Ventia’s acquisition of Broadspectrum in 2021, the business had effectively doubled overnight – bringing together people, teams and ways of working from two different organisations. Ventia needed dedicated internal communications for each department to ensure cohesion – I worked with innovation.
the solution
What started with building a dedicated innovation hub on the company intranet – ‘INSPIRE’ – developed into a creative partnership with the group manager of innovation, crafting an internal voice for innovation across the business with newsletters, campaigns and events.
highlights
innovation communication
What started as a single task of building a SharePoint hub on the company intranet for Ventia’s Innovation department, grew into a creative partnership where I helped shape the voice and narrative as well as the visual expression of innovation at Ventia internally – one of the three strategic pillars of the business.
I built the INSPIRE hub on InVent – Ventia’s intranet – as the first home for communicating everything innovation across the business. The basic structure allowed for easy, continuous maintenance and updating of good news stories and other important internal communications.
From there, I worked with the Group Manager (GM) of Innovation to develop internal newsletters, not only sharing the latest good news stories across the company, but also creating greater engagement with the topic of innovation itself. This involved finding and writing stories from leads provided by the GM – essentially becoming a behind-the-scenes storyteller for how innovation was understood and experienced within Ventia.
From strategy to hands-on, newsletters grew into internal campaigns, posts on LinkedIn and Viva Engage, internal and external articles, infographics, animations and presentations for both internal and external audiences.
the impact
By making the internal communications for innovation relatable, playful and human at its core, people felt included and empowered to take part of the conversation.
a human voice for innovation
fresh and in-the-moment storytelling
With the GM of Innovation singlehandedly responsible for “driving a new era of innovation across the business” and constantly on the move, I had considerable creative freedom to develop an internal storytelling voice that aligned closely with the GM’s personality: adventurous, humorous, down to earth, inclusive and curious. That voice became a recognisable thread throughout the newsletters and helped make innovation feel more human and accessible to a broad internal audience.
As the newsletters appeared irregularly, I felt that it was important to acknowledge what had happened between each edition as part of the story and format for each newsletter. For example, after a long stretch without news because the GM had been travelling extensively across sites in Australia and New Zealand, I developed a newsletter built around a series of postcards from the places he had visited. The concept was playfully inspired by 'Uncle Traveling Matt', the wandering character from the children’s program, Fraggle Rock. The angle spoke to the fact that the GM had to travel a lot and didn’t always have time to deep dive into every innovation story. Rather than apologising for the gap in communication, we turned it into the story itself – giving our employees an entertaining overview of what had been happening while reinforcing the adventurous, curious and down-to-earth character of the innovation function. The newsletter received a lot of great feedback. Like innovation, the newsletters didn’t keep the same format; they remained new, fresh and tapping into what was going on at the exact moment we created it.
My work with the communication strategy, visual storytelling and out-of-the-box thinking ultimately earned me a place as one of the key ‘Innovation Founders’ – a select group of employees from across the business tasked with driving innovation at Ventia.
in partnership with the GM
developed a voice for innovation
sparking an era of innovative curiosity across the business
"Think outside the box". I helped shape the distinct voice of innovation at Ventia together with the Group Manager for Innovation.
what I did:
award-winning innovation culture
wrote the case study that became the basis for Ventia winning the 2024 Australian Business Award for "Most Innovative Company"
selected as 'innovation founder'
part of an exclusive group of employees from across the company
Irregular innovation newsletters told the story of what happened in the moment.
I ghost-wrote the case study about 'Pizza & Pitch', the award-winning innovation event that I helped develop. Click image to read the article.
As part of a campaign to honour World Innovation Day, I ghost-wrote an article about Ventia's innovation initiatives. Click image to read the article.
Another exciting case study about an innovation developed within the company. Click image to read the article.
"Ashika, what an incredible journey we have had driving innovation together. Your energy, conviction and endless ideas have been instrumental to our success. [...]
It felt like we were flying a plane - sometimes I was the captain, other times you took control, guiding us through some bumpy yet thrilling adventures. [...]
Saying I have enjoyed working with you is truly an understatement."
- Group Manager of Innovation, Gary Dring, October 2025
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