Guest Blog: Interesting outcome of the MyData Accelerator project

– What a datafied future of work & skills might be like

To this day, ten months have passed since the launch of the MyData Accelerator in November 2019. We coordinated the Accelerator at Vake, the Finnish State Development Company, supported by the Technology Industries of Finland and Sitra. It has been a learning experience for all of us: the participants, the coaches, and us coordinators. And the journey continues – although the final event of the Accelerator took place in August 2020 – #skillsdata is currently being built not only in Finland but all over Europe as well as globally.

The participants of the Accelerator focused on finding new ways to support individuals, employers, educational institutions and others

Built around the themes of employment and lifelong learning, the MyData Accelerator aimed to fast-track the development of MyData based services by means of peer and expert sparring related to the topics of business, data, and users / design. The participants of the Accelerator focused on finding new ways to support individuals, employers, educational institutions and others – for example by helping employers find the best candidates for open positions by sharing information about the candidates’ skills more efficiently. New techniques for planning career models were outlined for job seekers, to give them for instance suggestions on suitable employers or education through tailored recommendations.

However, already during the first sessions, we noticed that a prerequisite for building successful services in an area such as MyData is to collaborate and to have a functioning ecosystem around the topic. This notion got more and more clear for the group from meeting to meeting, and finally the last meetings were more focused on the ecosystem view than the service view. A dynamic ecosystem would be the basis for a human-centric skills data space to enable a future in which people, organisations and society achieve their full potential faster, easier and with complete control over their data.

However, already during the first sessions, we noticed that a prerequisite for building successful services in an area such as MyData is to collaborate and to have a functioning ecosystem around the topic.

With this thought, there is also a need to develop new business models and a need to figure out the value flows for revenue streams of the future: Who would actually pay what to whom and how? We must recognise the different ways value is created, transferred and compensated for and who are the partners needed – in a solution-centric model this is much easier to understand than when co-creating value in an ecosystem.

Who would actually pay what to whom and how?

The greatest value of MyData is having the individual at the centre of all this. The individual, or Matilda as we call her in our publications, would have the power to decide who can use her information and for what – in order to provide her services to help navigating her path through career and life. Whichever route she chooses to take – straight from job to job or with more detours to view and try different options – Matilda’s journey in work and skills is transparent, smooth and personalised. Enabled by a broad range of partners, services and data, Matilda can achieve her goals in work and skills easier, safer and better by having access to her work and skills in one seamless experience.

Watch the short video illustrating Matilda’s journey.

Find out more and join us

To collect our learnings, two publications were released at the closing event of the MyData Accelerator: “The Future of Work and Skills”, which brings together key lessons learned during the MyData Accelerator, and “Matilda’s story”, which showcases the user experience. In addition, a video was created to give an overview of the story. These publications are available at mydata.org/skillsdata.

All in all, the Accelerator was only the beginning – now it is time to very concretely build the ecosystem and make all this happen, together with everyone with the will to contribute. The participants’ collaboration is intended to continue in cooperation with MyData Global; if you are interested in joining, please be in contact with skillsdata[at]mydata.org.

The participants selected to the Accelerator included Barona Construction (Otso Kivekäs), Headai (Anu Passi-Rauste, Harri Ketamo), Kuntarekry (Misa Leiber, Toni Saalasti), Tampere University (Mira Valkonen, Juha Eskelinen, Katariina Yrjönkoski), Vastuu Group (Petri Tuomela, Jami Haavisto, Mika Huhtamäki) and Jobtech (Jonas Södergren, Marjan Dolatkhahan). The Swedish Jobtech brought the otherwise Finnish group a joint Nordic perspective and international labour mobility opportunities. The organisations were coached by experts Antti ‘Jogi’ Poikola (Data, Technology Industries of Finland), Jyrki Suokas (Business, Sitra) and Paula Bello (MyData Design). The Accelerator was coordinated by Terhi Marttila and Pia Erkinheimo (Vake).