OZ Minerals has welcomed a design thinking firm to its campus in what could be just the first of many collaborations
OZ Minerals prides itself on doing things a bit differently, which in this case involves inviting another company to co-locate at its Adelaide offices.
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OZ Minerals has welcomed a design thinking start-up to co-locate in its Adelaide office, in a move which managing director Andrew Cole says might just be the first of more such collaborations.
Dan Levy’s More Space For Light has worked with organisations such as Coles, Google, SA Power Networks and OZ Minerals, helping them work through their innovation and strategy programs.
OZ Minerals has in the past made a point of innovating, sending executives to Amazon and adopting some of their approaches for example, and is looking at new approaches in order to achieve a low-carbon mining and processing circuit at its West Musgrave copper and nickel project, in Western Australia.
Mr Cole said the old model of working at mining companies and businesses more generally, which had been smashed apart by the pandemic, involved employees sitting at their desks, staring at their screens.
“We’d been trying to change this for years, but the pandemic was the trigger which completely changed the paradigm,” he said.
“We are pivoting spaces like this, to not be an office space where you come and sit for eight hours a day and stare at a screen, but to be a place to come and talk to people and socialise and identify opportunities and identify threats and how to solve those things.’’
“The reason we were really keen to have these guys, their company, working in this office is for a number of reasons.
“It symbolises to our people that we’re changing things, we’re mixing this up, and this is not a place to come and sit any more. It’s a place to come and share ideas.
“And these guys think about things totally differently, so we can learn from that.
“And there’s also value for them because it’s a new company starting up and we’ve got some things that can help.
“Dan’s company cohabiting here is just the first. We’re going to do this again and again and again, with all sorts of different organisations. Whether they’re big or small or start-ups, it doesn’t matter.
“It’s people who we think we can mutually create value from and learn from.’’
Mr Levy said his company was very value-driven and its genesis could be traced back to him wanting to find more purpose and meaning in his own life.
“In the work I’d been doing, I’d seen frustration from organisations and executives both in being able to communicate what they needed, or projects and strategies not connecting with execution,’’ he said.
“I believe you shouldn’t outsource your problems, which is quite ironic because I’m a supplier. “But I think organisations have the creative capacity and capability to be able to solve problems.
“I think too often things that get too hard get replaced by the ‘busy and incremental’ and it’s these problems that get outsourced.’’
Mr Levy said he believed many organisations also didn’t know where to start with problem-solving and breaking issues down into management steps.
“What I’ve found, coming from a design background, is that the tools and methodology of design thinking are great for having that conversation,’’ he said.
Mr Levy said that with all of the company’s clients a focus was about inspiring them to think bigger and aim for more than incremental gains.
The consultancy’s name came from a conversation with Mr Levy’s son, who one day said he wanted “more space for light’’. What he wanted, Mr Levy said, was more space to play and create, and literally more daylight time to do the things he loved.
More Space For Light also hosts a monthly Talkshop series, which in the past has included speakers such as IBM lead designer Christopher Noessel, Google’s head of UX methods and process Kai Haley and McKinsey & Company’s design director Gordon Candelin.
■ For more details visit www.morespaceforlight.com.au
Originally published as OZ Minerals has welcomed a design thinking firm to its campus in what could be just the first of many collaborations
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