There's an ocean of open data out there, but you need some swim lessons before you dive in.
Plasticity Labs credits its time in the first cohort of Canada's Open Data Exchange's ODX Ventures program, for the funding and support that has helped it see the potential in that data ocean, and helped it move onto a global stage.
Plasticity Labs believes that superior workplace culture drives superior company performance.
Since 2014, the Kitchener-based social innovation consultancy has been advising large and small businesses how to improve workplace culture by nurturing happiness in staff and clients. Through human analytics, participant assessments and careful study, Plasticity aims to give people the tools for a happier, healthier life.
Co-founder and CEO Jim Moss credits ODX Ventures with helping Plasticity dip its toes into the data ocean.
As a Ventures cohort member, Plasticity was given a project: find a localized open dataset that could be correlated with its workplace happiness programs. What the team found was that snowfall corresponded with both customer and employee satisfaction on a day-to-day basis.
"We were forced to find the datasets, figure out what format they were in, make them into something we could integrate with our data and find significant patterns," Moss said. "This was our first (open data) venture. Open data was always on our radar, but ODX accelerated our interest and our ability."
Among other things, the ODX experience helped Plasticity hire its first full-time PhD data scientist. And that led to Plasticity earning a seat on the United Nations Global Happiness Council.
Communitech photo: Kelsey Vere
This independent think tank produces the Global Happiness Policy Report, a companion publication to the UN-produced World Happiness Report, popularly known for listing the happiest places on the planet to live. The policy report aims to show best practices for happiness that go beyond the workplace into the fabric of every nation.
Plasticity helped edit the policy report, released in February at the World Government Summit in Dubai, and will be a contributor to the next policy report.
"It's exciting because that's where we want to be," said Moss. "We're five years in now as a company and so to get to that place this quickly is a real measure of our commitment and our capability, and the prowess of my wife (co-founder Jennifer Moss), who led the whole charge on that front."
The seat on the happiness council has also allowed Plasticity to access two of the world's largest social behaviour datasets: the Gallup World Poll, which holds an 80-year archive of millions of survey results involving 99 per cent of the world's adult population, and the International Social Survey Set, a 40-year multinational accumulation of social science data that seeks to establish the commonalities among individual national studies.
Jim Moss said that the primary team working on the global datasets believe they can only unlock 10 per cent of the data opportunities they contain, so Plasticity has been invited to help access the rest. The opportunity is enormous.
Working with these datasets, will mean that Plasticity "will continue to grow our open data work and position us as global leaders in happiness and well-being data and insights."
Moss is looking beyond integrating these datasets into the Plasticity programs.
"My longterm vision is to develop a Perimeter Institute equivalent of a health and well-being research facility - three floors, 125-150 full-time researchers across every field - thinking about how to use data and information to improve the health and happiness of people."
Gratitude is a word that is woven into the Plasticity approach. That was demonstrated most clearly on March 20, International Happiness Day, when the company set a new Guinness World Record, with more than 5,000 Post-It notes attached to the company's gratitude wall.
And Moss is grateful for the ODX Ventures experience: "ODX accelerated our ability to go after something we wanted to do. . ." He says that ODX can help businesses "start to build the capacity to understand how to unlock this ocean of information."
