Working culture facilitating innovation: what I learned during my internship at Dokk1 in Denmark
It’s almost two months since my internship started. I have been working as an intern for Dokk1 known as Main Library Aarhus in Denmark. Even though there are many challenges that I face everyday as an intern and as a person from a foreign country, I enjoy working in here and learn more than I expected. In this post, I would like share 3 things which affect Dokk1 to create innovation, which I learned from my internship.
1. Task-oriented roles & try-it-out culture
After the final decision was made for the internship from Dokk1, I talked often with a person who is in charge of my internship. Lets say her name is Katherine. Katherine and I exchanged several emails to figure out what I can do during the internship program at Dokk1 and she sent me several options.
Honestly, I was bit surprised because the options that Katherine asked me was to be a driver of my own project despite its position as an intern. When I was an intern in several companies in South Korea where I am from, it was typical to work with projects or tasks given by bosses.
Anyway, I could understand why Katherine suggested me to start and lead a project by myself as soon as I arrived at the office. In Dokk1, everyone welcomes new ideas and is ready to listen to others. Furthermore, working culture is supportive enough for employees to carry out their ideas into practice in the library.
In my case, there are two projects that I have been working on as a driver so far. When I suggested several ideas, my colleagues did not hesitate to say “try them out.” The first project that I worked on was to raise funds from international companies so as to hold one of the events in the library. From planning and writing proposal to contacting the international companies, I could work for it by myself. The second project is ongoing and it is to organize coding workshops for citizens.
In retrospect, I had worked to complete given tasks in order to meet the bosses’ satisfaction within certain periods. Of course, I could barely see innovative products or services in such an environment. Whereas the working culture in Dokk1 encourages to be active, to take responsibilities and to explore new ideas no matter how big or small they are. Plus, the flat organizational structure facilitates ideas to be executed promptly without time and energy consuming approval processes.
2. Partnership: co-creating services and events
There are approximately 700 events happening at Dokk1 across genres during the second half of 2018. The secret that Dokk1 can hold heterogeneous workshops, activities, and programs is in the partnership with local people and organizations.
Partnership in Dokk1 is significant to find needs of the society and provide various learning opportunities to the local community. Dokk1 has made more than 70 partnerships with NGOs, educational institutions, and other public service organizations. Through the partnership, Dokk1 can understand needs of the society and provide various learning opportunities to citizens. For instance, Coding Pirates which is a non profit organization visits Dokk1 every Wednesday to teach children and young people how to program. Anyone who is interested in coding can join the event with free of charge.
3. The relationship between work-life balance and productivity
Even though I heard from many news that Denmark has the healthiest work-life balance around the world, I didn’t expect any of positive influence of it on me. Now I admit that I have overlooked the power of the balanced life between work and personal life.
The more work-life balanced time I have, I can see myself that the healthier mind and body I have. With mentally and physically healthy condition, I can manage stress well and even use the stress to make my work better.
It is easy to find people — maybe most of people, I would say — who satisfy their job and love what they do at Dokk1. Impressive projects over the last decade reflects how they have enjoyed their works. Those projects have played roles to transform a traditional library into the future library where people can learn, communicate, create and share with community.
Last but not least, there are tow reasons that I write this post. First, I want to let people know that there are more valuable things beyond the architecture and the facilities of Dokk1. Dokk1 of today has not built overnight. It took almost a decade to figure out how Dokk1 can be a user-centered library as well as a culture center for the future. It wouldn’t have been possible to have Dokk1 unless Dokk1 people had given passion and love to what they did.
Second, I would like to emphasize that accumulative daily innovative services, programs and places have made Dokk1 the most cutting edge library around the world.
Before you leave …
Is there anything that you want to know more about me, my internship or Dokk1? Please leave comments below. I will try to answer for your question on the next story!
