The name is absent

Table 1. Workshop “Services Industriels de Genève”.

2.2 Parti Démocrate Chrétien

The Christian Democratic People's Party (Parti Démocrate-Chrétien - PDC) is a center-right
wing Swiss political party. Its Geneva section invited ThinkServices to run a creative
workshop for the Economic Commission on the theme of Jobs and Skills of the Future. Such
a prospective issue naturally triggered their interest for co-creativity, design thinking, serious
gaming thus leading to their request to experience such methods at first hand.

The roughly 2 hours Skill Box workshop was a mix of two techniques: Persona creation
and Service Box. First, the participants were asked to describe the profile (persona) of the
future worker. In order to be as open as possible, they were given the following categories of
work to address in groups: nursing & health care provider, teacher, bank employee, librarian,
blue-collar worker or one of their personal choosing. They were also given a set of thinking
cues in terms of: education and training (initial and lifelong), work load, places, schedules,
wages, retirement, tools, recruiting, personal vs. professional life balancing, etc.

Following the persona definition the participants were asked to design the “skill box” (i.e.
service box corresponding to that profile) as an actual artifact they could display in a job fair.

Finally, the groups were asked to present two things: first, the persona they imagined
followed by the box they co-designed as if they had been in a “skill store”. We deliberately
looked at the result from the standpoint of observers. This allowed us to witness the following
thought process. The participants clearly had in mind the societal drivers and requirements in
terms of preparedness level of a political party. Therefore one could easily imagine that their
next step could be to conduct a SWOT analysis of some of the salient aspects revealed.

Among these aspects three clearly emerged from the stories. First and foremost was the
importance of technology as enabler in the areas of learning, organization and planning of
work. The second aspect touched upon the growing changes in social structures and the
corresponding work environment thereof. Of particular attention were the increase of working
women and the redistribution of traditional family structure. Finally, the fundamental role of
the networked life (i.e., social networking, virtual teams, lifelong learning, etc.) in all aspects
of both private and professional lives especially considering their blurring boundaries.

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