The most popular idea to emerge so far from the GSU innovation centre is researching ways for staff to teleport across Regent Street to and from work each day.
Since transporter technology doesn't exist, however, people in The Workshop (as the centre is called) are focusing on proposals that are much easier and quicker to develop.
Unveiled in late March, the plan is to give GSU staff with good ideas the time and resources needed to develop them. Communications director Wendy Watson said an online program allows employees to upload their idea, giving as many practical details as possible. Other staff can see the ideas, and add anything they think can help.
After a couple of weeks, GSU innovation officer Andrew Athanasopoulos vets the idea and staff are given time to dedicate to their plans to see what it would take to make it happen.
"We wanted a space we could dedicate to people working on a project, not on the side of their desk, but actually as their main focus,” Watson said. “For a fixed amount of time, with a responsibility to report on a regular basis, to request resources if the needed them. Whether that be expertise from another department in the building, which is actually an integral part of our whole model. If they need (outside expertise), we can help them get it."
The GSU board has dedicated as much as $70,000 to help develop the ideas. What kind of proposals are they looking for?
"Every place you've worked, every place I've worked, there's always something that just kind of ticks you off,” Watson said. “You wonder, 'Why do we do this, it's the stupidest thing. If only we did ...' But maybe you don't have the coding expertise to actually fix that, or it's not your responsibility, but no one in IT has time to do it or has thought about it.
"The idea is people go into the software, state what their idea is, what's the reason, what's the solution, what's the benefit of the solution and what kind of help to they need?"
Currently going through the process is an idea Watson and fellow communicator Victoria Benkovich have to develop an online outage map, as other utilities have, which would offer the public a way to quickly get information about power disruptions.
"Right now, our control room and the system that we have doesn't support an outage map," Watson said. "But we know that, with focus, we can get there. But we're the communications people, we sure as heck don't know how the distribution system works, or the software. We don't know how to code it, we don't know how what other pieces we might need."
Those are the issues that can be solved by going through The Workshop, she said. After two weeks of developing the idea, they would make a presentation to Athanasopoulos, who determines whether it's a viable and worthwhile idea and allocate resources and time to get it done.
"That will be their only job — just to work on this problem, or the solution, I should say," Watson said.
The Workshop is geared partly to appeal to younger staff, who are bringing new attitudes toward their jobs to the workplace.
"Millennials want, not only a good living and benefits and job security, they also want know what they're doing matters," Watson said. "And we have young, talented staff working here, and more every year as the old guard retires."
Athanasopoulos said their focus is on internal ideas at first, but they will eventually move out more into the community to take in new ideas. That will likely take a year or so.
Benkovich said that, as far as they know, they are the first power company in Canada to try this approach.
"We tried to find another utility in Canada that has this same sort of (centre) and we couldn't find anybody," she said. "So to our knowledge, we would be the first, or one of the first."
So what happens if it proves to be popular and they get a flood of ideas?
"We'll find out how much we can handle,” Athanasopoulos said. “Even without having the software launched within the organization, we had a number of people come up to us and say 'I have a great idea.' They're eager to get ideas in the funnel and start vetting them.”
