OpenText’s Tom Jenkins and Imaginea Energy’s Suzanne West come from different parts of the country, and have built their careers in different sectors of the economy.
Jenkins, of course, is the former CEO and current board chair of OpenText, one of Canada’s largest and most successful technology companies. West has built and sold oil and gas companies worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and she’s trying to do that again – albeit with a greater focus on environmental and social responsibility – with Imaginea Energy.
But if there’s one thing they have in common, it’s their belief that innovation and collaboration are key to growth and prosperity in their respective sectors – and that those values are key to bringing them together.
It’s fitting, then, that they’ll be together to deliver the keynote address, along with TransAlta CEO Dawn Farrell, to kick off this year’s Canada 3.0 conference in Calgary on Oct. 28. The subject of their keynote, a call to action on the need for Canada’s energy and technology sectors to work more closely together, couldn’t come at a more important time.
Jenkins says the fact that Canada 3.0 decided to come to Calgary and partner with the Canadian Energy Supply Chain Forum represents an important opportunity for people working in the technology and energy sectors to get to know each other a bit better.
“It’s not like the energy sector guys aren’t innovating, and it’s not like the tech guys haven’t been chasing down oil and gas issues. But that doesn’t mean that they have a very good working understanding of each other, and one of the reasons we wanted to bring Canada 3.0 to Calgary was to accelerate that. It’s good for both sides, both the vendor and the client. It’s also good for the country.”
It’s particularly good for the energy sector, given that the most pressing challenge it faces in the current economic environment isn’t how to extract oil and gas resources, but how to do it as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
“The better we are at producing things in the most cost-effective way, the better off we’re going to be,” Jenkins says. “And that’s the great thing about productivity: It works both ways. It allows you to get more done in a growing market, but it also allows you to save a lot of money in a static or shrinking one. That’s what I’ve spent a lot of my career doing – [learning] how to do you things more efficiently, whether it’s in process or handling information. And all these digital guys that are coming? That’s what they do.”
The challenge for the energy sector, West says, isn’t so much in finding better ways to do business, but being willing to actually embrace them.
“I’ve been shocked at how many things are out there that are ready to go, or nearly ready to go, that we’re not using. But my industry is a little bit plagued by fear. Nobody wants to step out and be that person who steps in the poop pile or isn’t completely successful. They’re willing to be the third or the fourth or the tenth, but they’re out if they’re number 1. In my mind, that’s a huge barrier.”
It’s particularly odd, she says, given that the energy sector already has a tried-and-true method for de-risking things.
“It’s why we drill exploration wells. It isn’t because that well is going to have really fantastic economics. It’s because that could prove up a billion barrels of oil. It’s funny that we have an industry that gets it from that aspect, but hasn’t translated it to this lovely marriage with the technology world.”
Equally problematic, West says, is the sector’s unwillingness to look beyond its own borders for potential solutions to problems.
“They just focus on the technology within their industry, which they’re either comfortable with or know about. But it’s like, ‘Why don’t you go see what Google’s doing?’ Hey, maybe not everything is applicable, but that’s the great thing about brainstorming.”
And, she says, the energy sector has a lot to learn from its peers in the high-tech world. “We’ve been an industry that’s hyper-competitive – fighting for market, fighting for dollars. To me, the tech sector has been the showcase of the power of open source. Look at what Elon Musk just did – gave away all of his patents. But he knows that’s going to make him more money, because he gets that he’s running a battery company, not an electric car company.”
Neither West nor Jenkins expect any Tesla-level breakthroughs to happen at this year’s event. Instead, they say, it’s about each side getting to know each other and forming the relationships that could, one day, be the foundation for some mutually-beneficial projects.
That’s why, according to Jenkins, Canada 3.0’s success will be determined as much by what happens in the hallways as it will be by the content of the sessions.
“If all that gets accomplished is that everyone becomes more aware of the technologies that are being worked on in other industries, or that have been done for other energy companies throughout the world, and the tech guys get exposure to problems that they hadn’t thought about before and they go away and think about how to solve them, that’s a great conference.”
But, as West points out, it has to mark the beginning of a deeper and more engaged relationship. Working in isolation is no longer an option – not if both sides want to continue to grow their share of, and contributions to, the Canadian economy.
“Invariably, we’re better together. The world belongs, and the future belongs, in my mind, to those people who collaborate the most,” she says. “The pace of the change, the amount of information . . . you can’t do it by yourself anymore.”