CONFIDENT that Jamaica could become a major force of digital transformation by deploying its natural capability to innovate, Jennifer Bailey feels this is our time to make an impact. She teaches and consults on innovation and entrepreneurship at Babson College in Boston, Massachusetts.

“In order to maximise the potential for digital innovation we will have to incorporate interdisciplinary collaboration. To make the most of emerging technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) we will have to simultaneously hit three interdisciplinary criterion: We will have to figure out whether it is technically feasible, show that it is commercially profitable, and, most importantly, confirm that it will provide added value for consumers and other stakeholders,” she says.

Bailey is confident about the success of this approach based on her current work at Babson College as well as in her experience in international consultation.

“Successfully leveraging technological opportunities will also require cross-sector cooperation between the private sector and the public sector and non-governmental organisations (NGOs),” she notes.

This collaboration is at the heart of her current teaching at Babson, which Bailey has written about in a paper titled ‘The Power of Cross-Sector Collaboration’. In it she shares a case study involving three working groups charged with designing and implementing an IoT-enabled solution in order to create a smart, connected, inclusive public transportation experience for the visually impaired.

A proud graduate of Immaculate High School, where she was a head girl, Bailey pursued undergraduate studies in chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania and worked at Alpart bauxite company in St Elizabeth.

“I enjoyed working on the systems implementation projects at the plant, and so I decided to pursue an MBA concentrating on information technology management and operations management,” she explains.

With her MBA, Bailey joined the team at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a supply chain software consultant and project manager. She later extended her software implementation experience to lead projects such as the SAP Planning and Optimisation Suite at JM Hubber and the Oracle Supply Chain suite at RICOH.

Her consulting work showed that there was a niche area worth more in-depth study. So Bailey went back to Georgia Tech for a PhD in operations management.

“Once I started to learn more about operations management I realised that there were two underserved areas. The first was taking the principles of operations management which had been traditionally applied to large, mature companies and understanding how these could be applied to small, entrepreneurial ventures,” she says.

The second area involved looking at how a company could effectively manage its innovation processes and its intangible assets.

These academic pursuits drove her desire to be a creative problem-solver and her passion for pushing innovation in both large and small enterprises.

Turning her attention to the Jamaican landscape, Bailey sees the pandemic as an opportunity to put into practice some of her thinking and is urging those who will listen to take a look at the value of collaboration to drive innovation.

Sensitive to the reluctance shown in some quarters, Bailey encourages a culture of openness to fresh ideas and initiatives.

“Change is hard, and so digital transformation is hard. As individuals, organisations, and nations we are most comfortable with the past. To embrace digitisation we have to become comfortable with being uncomfortable and become competent at exploring the unknown which holds our future potential,” advises Bailey.

This confidence in our ability is born out of her studies of knowledge management challenges in innovation.

Her work has won industry-wide recognition and the Babson College Dean’s Award for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching.

At a time when there is a new respect for teachers, Bailey, who researches in the areas of innovation management, entrepreneurship and operations management, offers her experience, skills, and passion for making Jamaica a world leader in transformation. Her focus at home and abroad is on sharing the potential of innovation to disrupt and transform organisations and nations.