Adam Caughill, Director, Lottery Business Development & Innovation, OLG spoke on how innovation today sparks future innovation.
An elevator pitch (or perhaps summary) of Caughill’s presentation would be: “If we hadn’t tried (blank), we wouldn’t have (blank).”
In 2016, OLG figured out how to bring gift cards to market. The project required an investment into technology integrations. Through these projects, OLG gained a strong understanding what the various vendors can do.
A year before, OLG had been working on in-lane solutions. They had preprinted tickets that would activate through retailers’ POS. Retailers were excited about the premise but shied away from the project once they understood it required a hefty IT investment on their side. “But after we launched gift cards, a light bulb went on. These new partners activated stuff. They are already in the retailer POS systems. They deliver and replenish systems… Our original gift card investment turned into our in-lane solution… This would have never happened had it not been for gift cards,” Caughill said.
Now that the in-lane solution has been invested in, what other products come from it? That’s the question Caughill pitched to his team. One product was a fast lane product that had a progressive jackpot for each store. “We just finished some new game research in Ontario and this was the top performing concept, enabled by the original investment in our innovation project,” Caughill said.
Other concepts arose that would allow for other CPG products to have lottery tickets on them, like a bag of chips or a bottle of water.
“Those are just a couple of the opportunities we have identified from this original investment in technology we made. When we discuss our process for innovation at OLG, we talk about connecting the dots between insight, opportunity, capability and available technology. And tying those together with a clever idea,” ended Caughill.