How a Smart Team-Building Idea Rewrote Petrobras’ Innovation Playbook

About Petrobras: 

Brazil’s state-controlled energy giant ranks among the world’s largest oil companies—#58 on Forbes Global 2000, #71 on Fortune Global 500. Headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, Petrobras produces approximately 2.8 million barrels of oil equivalent daily and operates one of the world’s premier energy research centers. The company holds exploration blocks in the Gulf of Mexico through a joint venture with Murphy Oil, making its innovation strategies directly relevant to North American and European energy executives.

When Brazilian energy giant Petrobras shifted to hybrid work during the pandemic, managers at its Búzios field’s reservoirs unit spotted an opportunity. They organized outdoor team activities as a way to rebuild bonds while respecting health protocols.

What began as a single event gained momentum fast. The initiative spread across the Búzios unit, eventually drawing 200-plus participants per session for dozens of wellness, health, and team-building activities. That organic growth exposed a gap: 

The initiative needed smart workflows in order to scale—moving the company beyond informal processes toward smart, replicable management systems to be implemented across Petrobras’s global operations.

The project’s ultimate success signaled something even bigger: a fertile environment for intrapreneurship—proof that grassroots movements, properly supported, can generate enterprise-wide solutions.

Structured Experimentation, Real Results

Petrobras—a longtime CESAR innovation partner—identified the CESAR Summer Job program as the right vehicle to mature and test this key management initiative.

CESAR Summer Job is a program that connects university students with companies facing real business challenges. Over six weeks, multidisciplinary teams work alongside CESAR mentors through immersion, ideation, prototyping, and validation using agile methods. Companies gain rapid experimentation capacity, access to emerging talent, and a reinforced innovation culture.

This strategic engagement was custom-built with a narrow scope focused exclusively on the Petrobras challenge, and CESAR experts provided key insights and oversight.

The learning path prioritized speed. Design methodologies, agile cycles, and facilitation tools kicked in from day one. The objective: create conditions for students to transform a real business challenge into a functional MVP with genuine organizational value.

Multidisciplinary Talent, Multigenerational Impact

The squad’s formation matched the challenge’s complexity. CESAR selected five students spanning design, computer science, and data analysis—ensuring complementary skills with diversity in gender and identity across team member. This purposeful team composition brought multiple perspectives to enrich the creative process and sharpen the project’s alignment with Petrobras’s needs.

Students received continuous support from a 30-person CESAR team including mentors, facilitators, and technical specialists. Together, they led an intensive experimentation sprint with immersion sessions, ideation workshops, business modeling, and usability testing. Petrobras participated actively at every stage; contributing context materials and joining workshops, weekly ceremonies, and feedback sessions.

The student-employee collaboration emerged as a highlight—demonstrating the power of co-creation across generations and professional backgrounds.

A Working MVP and Broader Organizational Gains

By the end of the project, the team delivered a functional MVP for volunteer program management, including class scheduling, activity registration and centralized tracking—replacing informal processes with a scalable tool.

The impact for Petrobras extended beyond the development of the initial product. This smart and speedy R&D collaboration generated value across multiple dimensions:

• Low-cost rapid experimentation in a controlled environment
• Employee engagement through hands-on innovation work
• Access to emerging talent and fresh perspectives
• Innovation culture activated through real collaboration
• Cultural shift toward openness, co-creation, and change

Ready to Turn Challenges Into Solutions?

CESAR partners with organizations ready to innovate with agility and purpose. Through programs like CESAR Summer Job, we connect companies with diverse talent, proven methodologies, and a complete experimentation ecosystem—from research and ideation, to design and development, to testing and a validated MVP. Explore CESAR’s Corporate Innovation Portfolio →