2 Case Studies
In this section we describe the design workshops and the three organisations in which they
were organised: one state-owned multi-utilities company; one political party; the information
system strategic committee of the Canton of Geneva. We will also detail the objectives of
these workshops.
2.1 Services Industriels de Genève
The chief information officer (CIO) of the Services Industriels de Genève (SIG, the state-
owned, multi-utilities company of Geneva) is in charge of a team of 10 managers responsible
for the different information technology (IT) services.
The creative workshop was organized with this team about the future of the IT in the
organization [17]. It was based on the Remember the future approach [18]. The main goal of
the CIO was to make his colleagues stand back about the evolution of their job and of their
professional environment over the next 10 to 15 years.
hal-00616740, version 1 - 24 Aug 2011
During the first part of the workshop the participants were asked to imagine their workplace
in the year 2040 and draw it onto a board. Rather than claiming to correctly describe the
reality of 2040, this initial step allowed them to immerse in this far future in a very natural
way, making their thoughts tangible through the drawings. It constituted a very good starting
point for the rest of the workshop with people envisioning colleagues collaborating from the
other side of the planet, convergence of private and professional environments, teleworking
using rich interfaces, holographic avatars, ubiquitous sensors, or pervasive virtualization.
Once “projected” in 2040, everybody had to imagine himself as the CIO of SIG celebrating
his/her retirement. At this occasion the CIO is asked to tell the story of the building of his new
team 20 years ago (in 2020) and outline why and how this team contributed to the success of
the organization in the following years. Two groups were formed and asked to elaborate their
scenario in different contexts. One group was supposed to imagine the evolution of the IT
team in a context of commoditization: the IT and the information systems were in this case a
support to the evolution of SIG. The other group worked on a contrasted scenario where the
information systems were supposed to be part of the core business of SIG.
To support their thoughts each group was suggested to elaborate on IT missions of the SIG
in the proposed context, on the evolution of the competencies needed to achieve these
missions and on the services proposed by their teams.
Even if constructed in two very different contexts, the story proposed by each groups
conveyed some common preoccupations. First, data and information was envisioned in each
context as a strategic resource for the organization. The workshop helped the team to explicit
the value of the information as a primary source of knowledge. Many services were imagined
based upon data, information and knowledge, with new activities and competencies (such as
“service trader” or “semantician”) needed to deal with that.
The CIO of SIG had no peculiar expectations with respect to the outcome of the workshop.
But the ideas and reflections generated during the workshop evoked different useful
perspectives regarding the evolution of his organization. He mentioned as an intangible result
the fact that his team stepped back with respect to their daily activities and a reinforcement of
the team spirit.