Fresh eyes from qualified on-demand professionals and access to cutting-edge technology can break down barriers and accelerate innovation while empowering people to do their best work.

Our last blog post gave an overview of the Open Talent Model (OTM) and requirements for it to work effectively in upstream oil and gas. This post looks at how the ThinkOnward Open Talent Model contributes significantly to breaking down barriers and accelerating innovation in the upstream oil and gas industry.  

What barriers?

Because of the inherent complexity and risk in upstream oil and gas operations, industry workflows must manage and mitigate risk. However, the case can also be made that existing workflows can create barriers—for data and ideas—that can stifle innovation.

Despite the industry’s best efforts to break down traditional domain silos they often persist among the multi-domain professionals required for oil and gas exploration and development. Additionally, as part of managing and mitigating risks, companies devise traditional ways of working that must include standard risk parameters. People acclimate to these parameters and often won’t veer away, even if they think they may have a great new idea. Consciously or unconsciously, they often know that pushing some boundaries would require a lot of extra work, which teams simply don’t have time for.

Even a company’s standard technology set may create barriers. As part of its risk management strategy, technology sets can be quite “locked down” and making changes can be time-consuming, which can limit access to new technologies and new ways of analyzing data, thinking, and solving problems.

Also, while companies are well aware of new technologies (such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and large language models) they may not have the in-house expertise to decide the best way to implement them into the existing technology set. For example, these new technologies appear as stand-alone products that can be used at various steps in workflows and are being integrated into oil and gas software products. Do you need both types of products? Only one? Which one? What will be the impact on the existing IT environment?

With reduced budgets and staff members trying to keep up with daily, ongoing project work, the bandwidth or expertise to innovate often just isn’t there.

How OTM solves the problem and empowers innovation

New insights and innovations are achieved in two main ways.

First, the diverse experience and fresh sets of eyes of the on-demand professionals—which are most likely different from a client company’s typical way of working—provide fresh perspectives, insights, and opportunities. (REMINDER: In the last blog post, on-demand workers not understanding exactly how a specific company traditionally works was listed as a challenge. But this fresh perspective is actually a strength and benefit of the OTM.) An industry-experienced OTM provider with accurate understanding of both client requirements and on-demand professionals ensures good matches of qualified professionals to the right projects.

The OTM team members collaborate among themselves on an assigned project, meeting with the client sponsor at a frequency specified by the client. So, the project work happens out of band of the client companies regular work, where teams can develop their own ways of working, and freely exchange ideas as they come together to work on a project. The client stays informed and can provide direction while the on-demand professionals can focus on one specific project, unencumbered by other day-to-day tasks, meetings, or other projects.

Second, the computing environment where contract professionals work (provided and supported by the OTM provider) has technologies and modern, innovative software solutions that include machine learning, artificial intelligence, and large language models (LLM), which may not yet be widely available in a client company. The OTM-provided cloud environment means that the highly skilled professionals have access to state-of-the-art technology, support personnel to help in using it, and the option to apply it to their projects. Furthermore, the OTM-provider trains the professionals on the new technologies thus increasing the professionals’ skills and toolkit, while benefiting the client company.

One professional’s experience

Talking with Isabel F. about her latest project for a major oil company, it’s easy to see her intense commitment, passion, and joy as she describes her work and collaboration with her four colleagues, who she didn’t even know until the project began in early 2024. A geologist with more than 20 years in the upstream oil and gas industry and working in basins from South America to Europe, she has been working as an on-demand contract professional with ThinkOnward for several years now. ThinkOnward refers to seasoned professionals like Isabel, who have worked multiple ThinkOnward projects, as an “expert in residence” or “XiR”.

She describes how the process of getting to know her new colleagues mirrors the project work. The professionals on the team were selected based on skills specified by the client. As they began analyzing the data, they learned among themselves who had what skills and experience. They did some initial brainstorming about how to approach the work, which gave each team member a chance to present their views and show how they think and solve problems.

She explained how fascinating it was to see how differently people think, and how the team worked to reconcile and refactor these different viewpoints for new insights. Also, as the on-demand professionals do more projects through ThinkOnward, the opportunity to better learn the provided cloud computing environment and further develop relationships with their colleagues increases the potential for new and better insights and innovation. 

Case Studies: The ThinkOnward Open Talent Model in action

By leveraging ThinkOnward’s Open Talent Model, upstream oil and gas companies can break down traditional barriers, foster innovation, and empower teams to achieve significant breakthroughs. Here are two recent success stories of the model in action: 

• Identifying missed pay zones in an area of declining production.  For a mature area that had been in production for more than three decades, this 26-week, part-time project generated specific technical insights that were previously unconsidered by the client. Download the case study here.
• Unlocking exploration potential in an underexplored active margin. In this 10-week project, the insights generated by the team made it possible for the client to make informed decisions in less time, reducing decision time in the exploration screening process. Download the case study here.