Shell is a large company, and with that comes the existence of siloes across the organisation. Management in Shell recognised that as a problem, and therefore it created spin-off company Studio X, in the midst of the first lockdown in 2020.
“The company wanted to try something radically new”, said Louise Finlay from Studio X at this week’s EAGE Annual in Vienna. “Too stuck in existing routines, there was a desire to create an entirely different organisation that did not have the same issues a large corporation has.”
“Our XEEK platform is a good example of that. Based on crowd-sourcing principles, people can sign up for a challenge posted by Shell. They can subsequently upload solutions to these challenges, with the best ones being rewarded financially”, Louise says. “Anyone can get involved, which means democratisation of access to industry data. “For example, we had an investment banker solve a geophysical problem.”
XCOVER is another line of Studio X, which matches geoscientists to new projects Shell wants to see carried out. “People have access to a virtual workstation, which means that data are secure whilst projects can still be worked on in any part of the world”, Louise adds.
Finally, there is a mentoring and investment initiative called SixLab, which aims to provide seed funding for people who have clever ideas when it comes to the energy transition. “The programme brings those people together and provides them with the building blocks to work on their innovations. For instance, we supported two former airline pilots who developed a new type of battery.” This year the programme will support 6 to 8 people to realise their ideas.
“All in all”, Louise concludes, “this initiative taps into the a world where creative minds can independently and efficiently solve energy-related problems in a very agile way.”
