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Yeah.
I think one of the first challenges is trying to get innovation well understood and
a culture of
innovation and that starts with establishing a culture for business improvement.
So why do we need to change why the need to do things differently and really
getting everybody
to focus on how they can even just do small things in their daily activities
differently to
improve what the overall of what we're doing.
Then it's really starting to think through, well, how do we take some of those
small improvements and focus
on some of the step changes that we could make in our business.
And so one of the ways we did that at Barrick was to establish the business
improvement processes
first.
We then started looking at some of the digitization work or digital transformation
where we're really applying current technology to create those step changes.
Now I think what's worked really well with the digital team actually has been
engaging people
at the coalface very much in developing what we call minimum viable product so
very small proof of concepts people can play with it and actually feel the
innovation touch
and feel it and contribute to it as well as rather than things being so daunting
and you know
these massive sort of changes that people fear whether it be
automation or whether it be digital transformations, they can actually see how it
progresses.
And frankly the business can see how it progresses because you know one of the
other
challenges always is, you know, are we going to be spending (the questions are) are
we going to be
spending a lot of money and not receiving benefit or taking so long to receive that
benefit.
So one of the great I think ideas around the Agile development that a lot of
businesses are
engaging in now is that you can actually see the transformation you can touch and
feel it.
The challenge then becomes making sure that we've got good roadmaps that we have
good
collaboration.
Because of course the innovation team my team we then started structuring that
around early stage
technologies which have a lower level of probability of success so much higher
requirements for collaboration.
But we then hand over or transfer that technology and work very seamlessly then
with
the digital team or with the operations team who are the ones that are actually
going to be
adapting that technology, operationalizing it and adding in the people and the
process elements to
really bring that technology alive.
Yeah, look, fundamental, I think it is very important
that people feel that they are part of the innovation process.
And as we said before whether it's right at the coalface of business improvement
through to you
know helping actually understand the technology and how it applies to their
business processes.
And helping with the strategy and some of the ideas.
I think the other thing that we've tried to do in terms of establishing that
innovation culture is
to run things like hackathons where we not-- We do them for a number of reasons.
Most interestingly enough the last reason is for the technology or for the ideas
that we have had
some quite interesting and amazing ideas brought forward by mainly young people
that engage
in them but not exclusively. But also the reason we run the hackathons is so that
our own people
can engage and understand some of the problems that we're looking at solving.
So that they can get their children.
We've had a number of children of employees that have been have attended some of
the hackathons.
But also so that young people actually understand that there are problems in mining
that are really interesting and interesting to solve because I think historically
we have had,
unfortunately, you know, mining hasn't been one of the sexiest industries for
people to want to come
and work in and I think that's, you know,
to our detriment.
And then I think the other reason we engage in hackathons is one of the other
things we've found
that's been really interesting is that often people outside of the mining industry
have
really interesting ideas about how we can solve problems in the mining industry.
But I think even just that reaching out people constantly saying that we are
reaching out for
solutions that we have these interesting problems that creates that culture of
thinking
about things differently, being inquisitive about how we can do things.
Looking at technology and wondering how could we apply that internally to solve
some of the
issues that we have.
And interestingly enough I not only get connections from people whether it be on
LinkedIn or other sort of sources saying hey we've seen this really interesting
piece of
technology we think it might solve this problem but also internally you know people
reaching out
saying we've got this issue, would this be one of the solutions to that issue.
So I think that constantly wanting to learn, constantly wanting to
be inquisitive about things is fundamental to that innovation culture. So very
important for a
number of reasons.
One is...
Goes back to your question earlier around, you know, mining companies being maybe a
little anxious
about innovation, a little risk averse about doing things differently.
I think certainly sometimes people think that innovation is sort of weird people
with sticky
notes sort of coming up with abstract ideas that are unrelated.
So I think having a process and for people to be able to see how are you de-risking
innovation, how
are you managing the money.
What are the stage gates that these innovations go through,
these projects go through. I think that gives people a sense of comfort that there
is some
thought, there is some process, there some structure, because we're used to that in
mining.
We're used to project structures and operational structures and processes.
I think the other reason why it's important to have those sorts of things is I
actually think
that some structure gives people the opportunity to think more laterally and more
interestingly
than no structure.
I would say that in most of the sciences that in fact the structure of having a
scientific
process or the structure of having certain laws actually allows us to think
differently or to
think more interestingly than if we had nothing.
For me that's just I think that's the way we think, or the human brain thinks. Not
to say that you
can't have those sort of aha moments where you're waking up in the bathtub and
suddenly
you've got an idea.
But I think if you rely on those again that's a riskier approach than if we have
some sort of
way of developing ideas, thinking about ideas, testing them, road testing them,
proving to
ourselves that we think those ideas or those proof of concepts work before we end
up with,
as I said, a multimillion dollar project.
So I think for me it's very important not only to the idea generation itself, to
the
success and the de-risking of innovation internally but also externally how we
manage it and how people
can understand it.
And I think also so that people can know how they can fit into it, go back to our
culture.
I think one of the things that have been an interesting idea but mostly a tragic
mistake,
historically, have been for ideas like suggestion boxes.
Because, you know, humans - we people - we're wonderful at coming up with
a mass of ideas of things that we think should change ,
but how do you give people a sense of scale or impact or even just direction with
some of
those ideas and that's often the problem with suggestion boxes or suggestion
accounts or any
of those things, is how do you then deal with those massive ideas and how do you
structure
them and so one of the ways we do that is by saying well here's the criteria that
we sort of
measure innovation ideas or projects against.
So then people can at least think that through and go ok well my idea does hit a
number of
those criteria so I should send it towards innovation or no it doesn't.
It might be, you know, less impactful or less risk than some of those ideas maybe I
should be
sending them to business improvement.
Or maybe that's something that just me and my supervisor can talk about and we can
just
change.
So I think having some of those structures also allows people to make contributions
in a way
that then becomes most successful.