“The speed of digital development is such that it’s almost impossible to imagine what opportunities and possible threats might accompany it. To be able to exploit new business opportunities and assess risks even more accurately, we need to network and share experience within Stena but collaborate with universities, entrepreneurs, customers, suppliers and different experts”, says Eva Hansdotter, HR Director, People, Soft Values and Organizational Excellence.

When she began working at Stena four years ago, she early identified three strengths normally found in much smaller entrepreneurial companies – the speed with which decisions are transformed into action, the ability to not complicate matters unnecessarily and the courage to take risks.

“This is something many other large companies struggle to achieve, which translates into a competitive advantage for us. To develop this and be able to move even faster, we need to move up a gear when it comes to new collaboration”, says Eva Hansdotter.

As mentioned in previous numbers of SfärNytt, several different initiatives linked to networking and new ways of acquiring knowledge are in progress, e.g. the leadership programs SLP and Grow, Stena Turntable, Stena Challenge and Stena Digital Transformation Lab. Eva Hansdotter likens the initiatives to “vehicles” that are driven right through the companies as well as being linked to parties outside Stena, which together helps Stena to be one step ahead. One of the most important “vehicles” for networking and digital transformation is Stena Digital Transformation Lab. Its aim is to inspire, facilitate and drive transformative innovations on Stena’s account. The lab is not a department in the traditional sense but rather a virtual network organisation with both internal and external experts that varies over time and areas of development. What happens in the lab does not replace the digital transformation taking place in the companies but is an important complement.

“Our focus is on developing transformative innovations with a clear business value without disrupting our core business. The rapid rate of change means that we need to experiment and learn – sometimes in the form of inspiration and theoretical learning and sometimes in the form of concrete projects”, says Annika Elfström, Head of the Digital Transformation Lab.

“Other parts of the Stena Sphere participating in the lab in different ways are Stena Bulk, Stena Line, Stena RoRo, Stena Drilling, Stena IT and Stena Business Administration. We hope that even more companies will be interested in participating and contributing to making Stena stronger and better equipped for the future”, says Eva Hansdotter.

“The digital transformation currently in progress is as much about behaviours and leadership as it is about technology and it makes completely new demands on our leaders. This includes us needing to be curious, to experiment and be prepared for unexpected things to happen. In many cases, it also means that we as leaders dare to let go and move from managing to enabling and facilitating for others”, Eva Hansdotter points out.

A new leadership program, “Ready for anything” will be started up later this autumn. This program will focus on just these mechanisms.

SOME OF THE LAB’S CURRENT FOCUS AREAS

• Artificial Intelligence: explorative projects concerning AI-based loan agreements in collaboration with Stena Finance.
• Chatbots, virtual assistants: development of the self-learning virtual customer service Hom-E together with Stena Fastigheter. Several projects are in the pipeline. Read more about Hom-E on the next page.
• Blockchain – open transaction system for handling value. Exploratory project in collaboration between Stena Bulk and MIT and a project together with Stena Finance and IBM.
• Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, new technology for creating new offers to our customers and simplifying remote administration and maintenance.
• Smart Sensors, strategic market analysis in order to find smart sensors for collecting data. The more data we have, the better analyses we can carry out as regards our ships, properties and business activities.