FOMO. “Fear of Missing Out.” Over the course of Syska Hennessy’s history as a corporation, there have been instances where we applied technological innovations to projects, but we missed a bigger opportunity. We’re not letting that happen again. So we’re jumping in headfirst.
Our first step, which we took in 2020, was to create a corporate innovation program. We knew we didn’t have everything planned, we knew there would be mistakes and that the scope of the successes could not be known. But the commitment to engage innovation at a corporate level in an intentional, managed, and holistic way was an important milestone for us. It took trust, buy-in, and communication because innovation costs money, entails risk, and directly involves our biggest asset — our people.
We’re proud to say that we completed that first lap without too many stumbles. Instead of Waze, we have our own guide for lap # 2 – our innovation guidelines. Here’s what we came up with:
- Learn by Doing. Lots of other corporate innovation programs focus only on tech evaluation, with only a few people with “innovation” in their title examining outside technology. Syska wants to do better. We seek to develop our own technology (if it is appropriate), make innovation a core skill across business units and titles, and actively seek to develop a unique tech stack at Syska Hennessy.
- Continuous, Managed Exploration. Since we don’t have an unlimited budget, we have to carefully manage innovation, which means putting systems in place to track, develop, and report on innovation efforts. We also see innovation as a continuous process, which means that innovation is characterized as a series of iterations, rather than big lump investments.
- Improve People. Most important, we believe the core value of innovation is to improve the skills, knowledge, and talents of our people. Therefore, all innovation must be people-focused and must have a positive impact on how our people deliver projects. At Syska, we don’t believe that technology improves projects; we believe technology helps people improve projects. This is the way to pave the way to positive change.
It’s one thing to establish guidelines; it’s another to actually adhere to them. Rest assured we’re doing that too. Here’s where we’re at:
Our corporate innovation program is now well underway. We’ve launched our internal innovation management portal, we’ve created corporate systems for engaging with outside technology partners, and we’ve approved, executed, and returned results on our first innovation projects. For example, we used 18,253 RFIs from our projects and machine learning tools from Amazon Web Services to create our first predictive analytic with an accuracy of 92.4%.
What’s next? We’re holding ourselves accountable. In our view, the buildings industry is a team sport, where person or firm operates in isolation. We’re committed to sharing our innovation journey because we think innovation is important in AEC. Keep checking back to hear more about what we’re learning and our innovation insights. If we stumble, we’ll tell you. If we succeed, we’ll tell you – but not in a bragging way, we promise! No more FOMO for us means no more FOMO for you. Go team!