All Wärtsilians can increase their awareness and widen their digital knowledge with the help of the WeLeap app, introduced at the three-day internal Invent (Y)our Future event in Vaasa this June. On top of the launch of the app, the event comprised a wide range of activities.
“The programme revolves around digital transformation, innovation, cyber security, and business opportunities in a rapidly changing world,” said Juha Päivike, Director, Delivery Centre in Vaasa, opening the event in the role of local host.
Domenico Dargenio, Director, Digital Transformation, introduced the Leap transformation initiative and the WeLeap app as one of its elements.
“Leap is an initiative for supporting everyone at Wärtsilä navigate the business transformation to become a Smart Technology Company,” he described. “All of us Wärtsilians can gain new knowledge, challenge ourselves, enable new ideas, and take a further step into the digital world with this state-of-the-art app.”
WeLeap, which includes elements of gamification and social media, includes both online and offline activities. The app’s learning paths are broken down into small pieces, so users can complete a path at their own pace and according to their own schedule, for instance, between meetings or whilst travelling.
“Introducing engaging gamification with badges and reward mechanisms make it interesting for people to use the app,” Dargenio explained. “We should all be interested in growing our knowledge.”
The content is produced primarily by different teams at Wärtsilä, and it is available to all Wärtsilians. In the future, some of the content might be produced in collaboration with Wärtsilä’s partners, and access to it might be extended to the employees of partners and customers.
“The app can help us speak the same language and show some of the successful cases we have already developed together with our partners and customers,” Dargenio noted. “It’s a strong enabler, but the app itself won’t make the revolution. Now it’s up to all of us to roll up our sleeves and take action.”
One of the speakers at the event, Niklas Wägar, Director, Technology & Solutions, noted that the energy business, previously seen as conservative, is one of the most rapidly changing businesses in a quickly evolving world. There are also various business opportunities that could be enabled by the digital transformation.
Wägar pointed out that there’s an ongoing paradigm shift in the business of renewables, primarily in wind and solar power, which are becoming profitable. On top of this, energy storage will be of growing importance.
“Fortunately, we have the Greensmith guys onboard,” Wägar said, referring to Wärtsilä’s recent acquisition Greensmith Energy Systems, a market leader in grid-scale energy storage software and integrated solutions.
Wägar emphasised that it’s up to each and every Wärtsilian to make the best of the new opportunities.
“We have the technology and the competence to lead the development towards a sustainable future, but to reach the stage where we have 100% renewables, there’s a need for more innovations,” he accentuated. “It’s like digitalisation. We can’t fight it, so we’d better join it.”
