John Riley was invited to the Post Office's new Innovation
Laboratory in Rugby. There, line managers are encouraged to open
their minds to the potential of IT to transform the way they
work
The Post Office's new £1m Innovation Laboratory in Rugby is
designed to stimulate ideas, technology awareness and intuitive
data interpretation from ordinary non-technical line managers.
The initiative follows the success of its temporary ideas lab
which, over the past two years, according to Post Office futurist
Howard Wright, has stimulated more than 1.4 million ideas from
about 8,500 visitors - mainly internal managerial staff.
The lab, a spacious new customised building comprising many
activity areas and colourful, state-of-the-art environments,
encourages employees to open up their minds to innovation.
Exhibits range from the familiar to the strange, from PCs to Wap
phones, to a strong practical focus on multi-dimensional
representation and interpretation of both structured and
unstructured data. The whole aim is to stimulate a climate of
creativity and awareness of the practical potential and relevance
of new technology.
Starting with a mildly psychedelic "innovation transporter"
experience, complete with blue and purple lights, the Lab aims to
fast-track line managers into relaxed mode. "It's like entering the
Starship Enterprise," enthused Alan Shepherd, director of research
and head of the Post Office Research Group (PORG).
The tour proper begins with a synapse-loosening "home of the
future" which has novelties such as: a worktop PC, down-projected
from the ceiling; an intelligent toaster which burns messages into
the toast; and an Internet-linked fridge.
Then follows a comparable "office of the future", a coffee bar,
demos of relevant user-friendly software and many other examples of
innovation, such as Tessa, the voice-activated sign-language
interpreter to enable Post Office counter staff to communicate with
the deaf.
"When board members start playing with finger Muppets, you've
cracked it," said Duncan Chapman, head of research services at
PORG, "they're then at ease and at their most creative."
The demonstrations will be changed regularly to create a dynamic
environment searching for practical and lateral input into future
business-to-consumer, consumer-to-consumer and business-to-business
postal products and services.
The overall strategy, said Maureen Gardiner, PORG's head of
future markets, is to use standard existing technology. For
example, when extrapolating correlations and relationships from the
database, the emphasis is on integrating human experience rather
than reliance on blue sky technology.
"We were going to go the artificial intelligence route," said
Gardiner, "but decided that standard techniques such as pattern
matching help give intuition back to the manager."
Testing the strategies
There are several areas set aside for strategic, normally
half-day, workshops, for envisaging scenarios and then
stress-testing the strategies. A permanent team of "futurists"is on
hand to guide ordinary managers towards turning dreams into
business plans.
No sticky blue tack is needed - all the walls are
felt-tip-friendly. Graffiti is encouraged and brainstorming ideas
are digitally photographed and sifted for practical use. In this
way the 1.4 million brainstorming ideas already collected will grow
fast.
Wright says the lab is looking at ways of measuring the
benefits. Instead of merely counting visitors, he said the lab is
actively auditing outcomes - measuring the impact on the business
on a six-monthly and annual basis. "We are looking for
tangibles,"he explained, "to be able to say, for example, that a
certain product started its life cycle here."
The lab has strong collaboration with other organisations and
particularly with universities, including de Montfort University,
York University and the University of East Anglia.
De Montfort University designed the "home of the future"and the
"office of the future"experiences, incorporating prototype
technology such as a talking toaster and an intelligent kitchen
worktop from MIT in the US.
Tessa, the British Computer Society Medal-winning sign-language
interpreter, was developed for deaf and dumb customers with the
University of East Anglia. On display in the Science Museum, and
already on trial in some post offices, Tessa is already a success,
despite technical challenges coping with about 300 different
dialects of sign language.
York University collaborated with its tool, called eBor, which
demonstrates the potential power of data mining structured
information.
There is a strong emphasis on practicality and on getting
business value from data assets. For example, one visual data
mining tool, which represents complex data in five dimensions,
using colour and shape, was used for real in an occupational health
application which analysed employee health data. That was
successfully sold to Bupa.
Through another simple visualisation application, which
correlates various measures across different parts of the business,
the Post Office was able to better understand how and when
pensioners pick up their pensions within the UK.
This enabled the cash float for pensions, typically around
£300m, to be reduced by about 40%, said PORG senior researcher
Henryk Trzbiatowski.
The lab allows mid-level line managers to gain an instant grasp
of how, for example, Ishakawa Fish Diagrams show up correlations;
how the Red Sheriff product gives you clickstream analysis; and how
Autonomy's Kenjin knowledge management technology works.
"Managers look at the graphs and that sets hares running," said
Trzbiatowski, "and then you need the techies to help explain the
findings."
The search for insight also extends to hardware devices. Wap is
already used as part of TV licence collection activity and
potential applications are being sought now for the next generation
of broadband mobile devices.
"We don't know yet how it will be used in the Post Office, but
we are looking for ideas,"said Gardiner.
There are also examples of large-scale collaboration. For
example, an Esprit collaboration with Deutsche Post, Pitney Bowes,
Lufthansa, and others, which demonstrates an advanced track and
trace system which pre-warns logistics managers in one country of
extraordinary batches coming its way.
Post Office line managers can see information-rich
radio-frequency tags embedded into letters - the next generation of
two-dimensional bar codes.
Above all, they can see tangible results from the Post Office's
£3.2m seed Innovation Fund, Started in May 1997, it invests both
internally and externally in high-risk, high-benefit projects.
All this investment aims at one end, to use the power and
capability of fairly standard IT tools to unleash the lateral power
of non-IT staff.
Any scepticism the board had two years ago about the value of an
ideas lab has now vanished. John Roberts, chief executive, told
Computer Weekly at the opening: "Technology is not front of mind in
an organisation like the Post Office. This centre is an excellent
way of helping bring it to the fore."
Innovation Lab sponsors
Suppliers backing the Post Office's Innovation Lab include:
Microsoft, BT, Wyse, Fujitsu, Citrix, Compaq, NEC, Lotus, Madge,
IBM, Nortel, Toshiba, Veritas and Business Objects.
The lab cost about £1m to build, hardware suppliers, such as
Compaq, Microsoft, Nortel and IBM, have provided more than £300,000
of sponsored equipment and a further £400,000 has gone into
interior display, lighting and so on.
The core networking technology for the lab comprises 100
megabits per second (mbps) Ethernet, 11mbps wireless, Gigabit fibre
for the servers and 2mbps connections to the Internet, all tied in
with a Compaq-based storage area network under Windows 2000.
Post Office Innovation Fund
The Post Office is spending £3.2m this year on high-risk,
high-benefit projects through its Innovation Fund. This goes on
both external and internal innovation, including, for example,
taking new technology from outside and applying it to the Post
Office's own environment.
Examples of projects set up since May 1997, and on display at
the Innovation Lab include:
- Infrared Thermography (in collaboration with Irisys): high-spec
infrared cameras are used to examine, for example, bearings and
belts on sorting machines to optimise maintenance.
- Post Pilot: a virtual reality CD-Rom/Internet prompt
demonstration aid for sales teams.
- Data Visualisation: is being developed for a range of
applications, for example, employee health; security; sales and
distribution; and clients' supply chains.
- Searchlight: a crime management project.
- Sulphur lighting: experiments in London to provide full
spectrum daylight lighting which is more healthy than fluorescent
lighting.