Sharing our learning from “Future Forward”
Co-authored by Portia Jones and Laura Wells.
As co-op students with the Ontario Digital Service Lab, we’ve been spending a lot of time this summer learning from our colleagues, and from others in the field.
A few weeks ago, we had the opportunity of attending the “Future Forward” event for students at OpenText’s Enterprise World 2017 conference. The event had several TED-style presentations regarding the digital revolution. Some of these talks discussed the importance of disruption, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs in organizations.
In an effort to share what we learn with the people around us, we wanted to highlight some important take-aways from the event with all of you.
Thoughts on disruption
One of the most salient things we learned was that, for an organization to continue to be successful, it is important that they “disrupt themselves.” This means organisations must continuously challenge themselves to come up with new ideas and products before their competitors. This is particularly challenging for longstanding organisations with lots of legacy and history — organizations like government.
According to the University of Waterloo President Feridun Hamdullahpur, in order to be disruptive, we must “be curious, question the status quo, incorporate diversity, come together, take risks and adopt innovative thinking.”
The Ontario Digital Service, and our Lab at Communitech, are using user research to help us “disrupt ourselves.” We are using generative user research to come up with new solutions for existing services, as well as new product ideas where needed.
Of course, digital in government is not a competitive market, per se, but that does not mean we can afford to be complacent. The global movement for outstanding digital services in government sets out a radical new agenda for how modern governments should function, and disruption through user-centred design is central to our model.
Thoughts on intrapreneurship
Although disruption is a critical factor in creating change, we learned that innovation often fails not because of a lack of ideas, but a lack of capacity to work on those ideas.
This is why it is necessary to have the right people on your team, and a strong understanding of agile practice.
At the conference, Craig Haney, Director of Corporate Innovation at Communitech, discussed the importance of having both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs in companies. Entrepreneurs are risk-takers that get the business started, while intrapreneurs build products and businesses inside of a pre-existing business.
When we thought of our teammates in the Ontario Digital Service, we saw that we were a team of intrapreneurs, working within the business of government but building new and exciting ways to interact with the organization.
Another speaker, Larry Smith, Professor at the University of Waterloo, spoke briefly on problem-solving: it’s easy to focus on easy-to-solve problems and lose focus on the broader, important problems that need solving.
This made us think of our approach at the Lab, especially our focus on generative user research. By starting with the user, we’re able to discover or validate the problems they may have and how those problems affect them in their everyday lives, not just in the immediate experience with government services.
So much more to learn
This introduction to disruption and intrapreneurship was very valuable to us as we learn about digital services and government transformation. We know that by continuing to learn, and by sharing what we learn widely, we can all work together to make government services that are better, faster, and simpler for everyone.
We’re heading back to school this fall, but we’ll be taking these things, and so much else that we learned this summer at the ODS Lab, with us as we head back to class. If you’re interested in our experience as co-op students with the Ontario Digital Service, please do get in touch!
If you are interested in learning more, here links to some of talks from Future Forward:
- Feridun Hamdullahpur: Disrupting the 21st Century University
- Martin Laforest: Quantum is Coming
- Mark Bergen: Shopify Goes BIG
- Craig Haney: Innovation Activation
- Stephen Piron: The Artificially Intelligent Enterprise
- Larry Smith: Why You Will Fail to Solve the Important Problems
