Guest blogger: An innovation challenge makes you forget rigid roles and brings benefits to everyone

There goals for the development of Työmarkkinatori are quite ambitious: to help people recognise their competence and any gaps in it in a comprehensive manner; to offer job and training opportunities; and to provide support, motivation and encouragement to people for making career plans. Whew!  

It is easy to agree not only on the magnitude of the goals but also on their importance, no matter whether you examine them from your own perspective or from the viewpoint of national policies. And no matter how ambitious the goal, it can only be reached one piece at a time. One key prerequisite for succeeding in the development of Työmarkkinatori is its ability to match a person and the job and training opportunities personally proposed to him or her as fittingly as possible. 

Therefore, in February 2018 we took a bold challenge. We launched the AI Goes to Work innovation challenge to find an AI solution that would ensure the matching of employees and skills on Työmarkkinatori. It was put out to tender in accordance with the innovation partnership procedure, made possible by the public procurement law. The process served as a study trip to the secrets of both AI and innovative procurement. 

Nothing new can be created using old recipes 

The first step towards a new solution was letting go of the traditional way of specifying the desired outcome for a procurement in as precise terms as possible. Therefore, instead of defining the final outcome, in the AI Goes to Work challenge the starting point was to specify the challenge needing a solution in as close detail as possible. 

This laid foundations for the whole project and defined the goals the solution was expected to respond to: 

• How to compile job and training information for general use from quite a mixed selection of sources? 
• How to also identify the non-apparent competence that the jobseekers have accumulated through hobbies or personal interests, for example?  
• How to wake up also those users who may not be actively seeking a job to map their competence and opportunities? 
• How could digital service best motivate its users? 

A deep dive into cooperation 

When cooperation with the selected suppliers began, it was again time to shake up traditional procurement procedures. The participants were invited to one place with experts in the subject and stakeholder representatives, and they all focused on what is essential: how could the above-mentioned goals be responded to in an interesting and realistic manner?  

The work required close collaboration between the experts and suppliers participating in the challenge, where rigid roles between the customer and supplier were sometimes forgotten. Teamwork, deep engagement and boldly calling things to question all have indispensable roles to play in co-development– and not only as regards suppliers. This mode of operation is also an excellent test on how cooperation might work with a particular partner with a view to the future. Is this a team with which we could solve even the most difficult issues? Does the customer have courage to stand by the team when difficult decisions need to be made?  

Advancing through trials 

The third and most important lesson learned from the challenge was – well – the process of learning itself. When seeking new solutions with new partners using new methods, one must be at the same time both critical and merciful towards oneself and the development under way.  

As the solutions develop, so does the understanding of the needs. If you are not prepared to update the goals set at the beginning of the project as new eureka moments arise, you only create solutions that are outdated the moment they are born. This is the method we also used with the Työmarkkinatori AI solution: doing trials, being patient and actively developing our goals.  

AI Goes to Work is among the first innovation partnership procurement projects implemented in Finland, and as such it is certain to act as a trailblazer for many future customer-supplier cooperation projects. One year after we set out to work, we can conclude that our boldness paid off: the KEHA Centre got to pilot two different AI solutions for Työmarkkinatori, and both development projects were completed this spring. 

I can hardly wait what the cooperation will lead to in the future. 

Anna Korpela 
Service Manager, Industryhack 

AI Goes to Work was implemented as an Industryhack innovation challenge. Industryhack is a Finnish open innovation studio that builds and runs cooperation programmes for its customers by which they collaborate with external partners and implement innovative procurement.