Earlier in the year, OUP Australia welcomed educators, suppliers and distributors to its annual Hack Day, titled HackLab 2019.
The day aimed to ignite a culture of innovation at OUP Australia and to hear and respond to the views and ideas of stakeholders on how it could better meet their needs.
During HackLab 2019, six teams of OUP staff and guests explored ideas that had previously been selected after a submission, voting and commenting process.
They then presented pitches to judges including OUP CEO Nigel Portwood, CFO Giles Spackman, OE MD Fathima Dada and OUP Australia Managing Director Arthur Baker.
The winning team titled ‘2B or Not 2B’ developed a proposal for a new B2B web experience for educators. Team members were OUP staff, Alex Chambers, Benito Andion and Adam Jovanou and representatives from Squiz, Campion and Splitting Image.
The People’s Choice award went to the ‘Lego Masters’ team, which explored Supply Chain Training, and put forward a pitch that aimed to improve the purchasing and logistics journey for customers. The team included Shaun Mazzocchetti, Michael Pearce, Jess Howard and Rakesh Pathania, alongside representatives from Australia Post, Splitting Image and Ligare.
Our newly released video offers an insight into what happened on the day.
OUP Australia Managing Director Arthur Baker said HackLab 2019 had provided a unique opportunity to explore the thoughts and ideas of stakeholders.
“This year our event evolved to include external educators, suppliers and distributors, which offered us the opportunity to learn more about the needs of our customers and other stakeholders, and ultimately, to improve the way we work with them. We’d love to see our Hack Days continue to grow and evolve in the future.”
As you will see from the video, the day was about challenging ourselves and fostering an innovative culture within OUP, and building relationships with our customers and other stakeholders, but also about having a great time.
The next step will be about bringing the winning project to fruition. The team responsible for the B2B Web Experience plans a discovery workshop in coming weeks to explore the project further so that a formal proposal can be developed.
Internal and external participants deemed the event a huge success, describing the day as “collaborative”, “engaging”, “fun”, “creative”, “inspiring” and “hilarious”.
It was the first time the Hack Day has been open to external stakeholders, after the inaugural Hack Day in 2018. One of the best signs that this new format was a success was that during the day, it was hard to tell the team members from OUP and those who were not.
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