Cooperation in Times of Digitalisation

Learning from each other has always been rooted in our society. In times of digitalisation, this is more important than ever. Only by doing this, it is possible to stay on top of things and to work sustainably.

This is also the idea that Janus Boye’s based his business on. The Dane runs a network of digital pioneers, Boye & Company, which invites members to regularly exchange experiences. This year’s slogan is, very fittingly, #CreatingTogether. In our interview, Janus shares what this means to him personally and which steps companies can take to stay relevant.

Janus, you have been watching and analysing digital transformation for many years. How can enterprises stay relevant?

When I lived in Munich, I had the pleasure of attending a BB King concert and he once famously said: “The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.” As we are going through digital transformation, including the introduction of automation and robotics, the key is to stay hungry and open to new inputs. You can’t just rely on employees bringing back knowledge from reading books or watching TED talks online.

To what extent is exchange, whether it’s cross-company or cross-industry, important for sustainable work in digitisation?

Peer learning where you build meaningful relationships is the key to understanding the impact of future trends. The key part of peer learning is that you meet regularly – it’s not just one or two days at a great conference, but it’s a meeting every three to four months which creates commitment and creates lasting value. Change doesn’t happen overnight, but requires a network of professional friends to create the best solutions.

#CreatingTogether is Boye & Company’s motto this year. What does it mean to you?

I realised, perhaps a bit late, at the beginning of this year that to take the community to the next level, we need to do a much better job at creating the learning space together with our community members. Throughout the years, I’ve been on a fascinating learning journey with input from members in Europe and North America, and #CreatingTogether is our way to say that we want to do an even better job at listening to members and creating the future peer groups and conferences together. In practical means, this means that we now have both group hosts and conference track hosts who are not our employees – I can already now say that this is working really well and I’m excited about implementing more feedback.

#CreatingTogether is also the motto of the 14^th annual Boye & Company’s conference which will take place in Aarhus, Denmark from 5 through 8 November 2018. How is this motto at the forefront at this year’s conference?

This year’s conference programme is much more a joint project with our members than it has ever been. Track hosts who are not our employees have contributed key input to improving the conference experience, inspired new session formats, attracted new contributors and speakers and much more.

For the conference participant, #CreatingTogether will also mean less lecture-style sessions and much more workshops, where you will work together with other participants on creating practical deliverables that you can bring back home to the office desk.

Which are the big trending topics of 2018?

There are so many moving parts at the moment, we’ve actually decided to expand the conference programme, so that we now have ten conference tracks. Some of the themes that I’m personally the most curious about exploring are:

• design sprints as a key way to make faster progress in projects
• the question of how the modern workplace is changing
• the tremendous impact of automation and robotics
• the emerging role of the product manager

Thank you, Janus, for the insightful interview! We're looking forward to the next one around the turn of the year where we'll talk about the digital trends of 2019.