By Jonathan Briggs, Co-founder and troublemaker
When we started Hyper Island in 1996, we asked ourselves what our students would need the most to become a valuable asset to their chosen industry. At the time, digital was called multimedia, and while other multimedia schools were teaching Photoshop and CD-ROM production, we decided to teach leadership, business, technology and creativity. These high- level problem solving skills held true while the technology changed and helped our students stay resilient and useful.
This year, we celebrated our 25th anniversary and have been reviewing every part of our plans to keep our courses, our students, and ourselves relevant. We want to stay “Real-World Ready”, and we can assure you, it’s an interesting conversation.
So, what’s changing? Let’s start with technology. Today, it goes without saying that almost every company you can think of will have a website, a mobile app if it wants one, a home in a variety of social media channels, and almost certainly will do business via e-commerce. Data has been recognized as important with analytics, customer insights, and competitor analysis also being commonplace. For many, this has led to the conclusion that digital transformation is over and the time has come to move on to something else.
While some companies are declaring “job done” others are scrambling to hire Data Scientists, AI experts, App Developers, Network Administrators, Systems Engineers, DevOps teams and other specialists. Of course, these roles are vital, but to maximize the value of these new hires, leaders will need to bring them together to solve the challenges and opportunities within their businesses. This will require them, as leaders, to appreciate the connections between these roles, and it demands what we at Hyper Island are calling “Digital Bravery”.
Digital technology is not something that can simply be passed on to the IT Team or a Digital Transformation Director, and forgotten—its impacts on the business and the decision-making process are way too important. Leaders need to appreciate the scope and possibilities of a wide and ever-changing range of technologies. In other words, they need to get their hands dirty by diving in themselves.
Leaders (and future leaders, such as our students) need to be able to do four things in order to capture the true sense of Digital Bravery:
Part of inventing the future is to take a longer-term view than we often do in business. Think on at least two different time horizons: now/soon and later. Often, we’ll dismiss a technology early in its evolution because it is clunky, slow, or hard to use. Leaders need to see beyond the immediate limitations towards what the technology reveals might happen and connect that with the business. Extend the ‘making’ to ‘testing out’ new business models, ways of working and new ways of engaging your customers and staff.
Building a culture of experimentation and making will create powerful team conversations and often provide powerful outcomes. Don’t let hierarchies or job titles affect the exploration. Make time to discuss these outcomes and capture learnings to share with the rest of the business.
Alongside these skills, a shift of mindset is also required. As a leader, it’s important to understand that the future is not a zero-sum project, and that collaboration with both catalysts and competitors will help you to stay in the long game. In other words, we share similar agendas and together,we can all chip in to realize our collective potential. But don’t wait for others to understand this. Get going with your curiosity and boldness—and be awake!
Digital Bravery is an exciting agenda for the next 25 years. It’s not set in stone and will evolve itself as we experiment and learn. We are committed, as we have been since 1996, to help individuals and companies cope with change and prepare for better futures. We too will be brave!
By Jonathan Briggs, Co-founder and troublemaker
If you want to hear more about Metaverses and digital bravery, check out this video with Jonathan and Hyper Island’s CEO Helena Ekman: