When Adecco, the world’s largest staffing and recruiting firm, needs to improve the way it technologically solves problems, it plants the seed with a small team of thinkers in Downtown Jacksonville.
Ignite is Adecco’s think tank and technological incubator of 22 product managers, marketers, designers, developers and facilitators. They are working out of the CoWork Jax space while their offices in the Dyal-Upchurch Building are being renovated.
“A lot of enterprise-level companies are creating these technical incubators to solve problems,” said Marketing Manager Sara Phipps.
Ignite’s charge is to find digital solutions for problems that arise around work.
For example, WickedSmart matches high-potential students with paid internships, with an emphasis on “meaningful.” Those areas include business, finance, accounting and technology, among others.
Phipps, who works on that project, said 53 percent of college students graduating today are underemployed or unemployed.
She said students double their chances of landing a job offer after graduation if they’ve had “a meaningful, paid internship.”
WickedSmart “hypervets” students and employers, she said.
The city approved a permit in early February for Dav-Lin Interior Contractors to renovate Ignite’s offices in about 7,400 square feet of space on the fourth floor of the Dyal-Upchurch Building at 6 E. Bay St. at a project cost of almost $100,000.
The offices will be modernized, including space for Maggie and Boston, the office pups. Ignite President Sean Paley said the incubator has been housed Downtown for about a year. The renovations should be completed by the end of the month or early April.
“At Ignite, we identify problems, develop ideas and draw on our collective experience to create elegant, intuitive solutions that change the way you work,” says the ignitewithus.com site.
Phipps said there are products in every stage of incubation at Ignite. “Culturewise, it’s very forward-thinking,” she said.
The environment is focused on experimentation. Ignite runs all its ideas through the “HuDiLeDa” filter, as in an idea’s application in human, digital, lean and data terms.
“That’s the core of our approach to everything,” she said.
Phipps said the focus on experimentation means that an idea is not positive or negative. “It’s about whether it did or didn’t work,” she said.
“We learn much more and much quicker if we know what doesn’t work.”
Phipps said Ignite is part of the mushrooming focus on startups, such as the One Spark crowdfunding festival and the KYN business accelerator financed by Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan. KYN offers seed and development money and mentorship.
Ignite works solely with Adecco, its parent company, but shares the energy of the emerging Downtown environment of young startups.
Adecco considers Ignite its innovation lab, “a small team looking to solve big problems.”
Phipps said it takes on issues that either are presented by Adecco or arise from the group. That’s followed by a “group-think.”
The three phases are seed, project and product.
“Seed” is the discovery phase in which Ignite explores the business, people and problems.
“Project” is the experiment phase in which the team recognizes issues and begins to identify and test potential solutions.
“Product” is the implementation phase in which it designs and develops the concepts and puts them to work.
Phipps said Ignite’s team takes an idea from the seed phase all the way through.
Ignite’s ideas are specifically around work, staffing and the workforce culture.
Adecco Staffing USA is part of the global Adecco Group, based in Zurich, Switzerland.
Adecco considers itself “the pre-eminent workforce management partner for Fortune 500 companies and career advisement expert for American workers, serving all of the key industries and professions.”
Adecco has more than 400 career centers and connects workers with jobs, “making us one of America’s largest employers.”
Adecco USA is based in Melville, N.Y., and its main Jacksonville offices are in Deerwood Park South in South Jacksonville. Adecco Group North America moved to those offices three years ago, in March 2011, from what is now the Wells Fargo Center Downtown.
Ignite, whose corporate name filed with the state is Ignite-
WithUs LLC, brings a fresh Adecco presence Downtown across the street from Wells Fargo Center.
“The goal to end all goals is to help Adecco” and its global leadership in digital staffing,” Phipps said.
@MathisKb
(904) 356-2466