‘You’ve got to do something different if you want to improve,’ Closing Keynote speaker says

New Orleans — Although his focus was on future technology, Cam Stevens went back nearly 70 years to help shape his Closing Keynote on Wednesday at the 2023 NSC Safety Congress & Expo.

The president and CEO of Pocketknife Group and founder of the Safety Innovation Academy shared quotes from the National Safety Council’s 1955 Accident Prevention Manual.

“The challenges ahead are great and would benefit if there were more radicals ready to invent and test new ideas in safety,” Stevens said, quoting E.W. Andrews.

With those new ideas in mind, Stevens said the Hierarchy of Controls can be changed with technological advancements, digital solutions and innovation. He detailed some of the advancements and solutions that are available for many organizations. 

“We’ve been using it for 75 years,” Stevens said of the Hierarchy of Controls. “Doing the same thing over and over again … really isn’t getting us to that next stage. E.W. Andrews told us back in 1955 that you’ve got to do something different if you want to improve.”

How can that improvement be achieved? Through curiosity, technological literacy, data strategy and relationships, Stevens said.

Even if technology and data “scare you to death,” Stevens said safety professionals have two other tools to rely on: curiosity and relationships. “They are the core things that safety professionals do really well.”

It’s that curiosity that led six different organizations to become semifinalists in the second annual Safety Innovation Challenge – hosted in collaboration with Safetytech Accelerator. During the Closing Keynote, each organization had an opportunity to showcase its unique product designed to reduce the risk of injury associated with hand-arm-vibration syndrome, repetitive upper body movements or overhead work.

The challenge builds on the progress made by the council’s MSD Solutions Lab – a groundbreaking program established in 2021 with funding from Amazon – to help organizations of all sizes prevent musculoskeletal disorders, or MSDs.

The semifinalists were 3MotionAI, Bioservo, Feraru Dynamics, Hilti, LifeBooster and Reactec.

Stevens closed his presentation with another quote from the manual: “The future is as it has always been, most uncertain. Here’s a chance for some serious thinking and evaluation. There’s no reason for the safety person to view general technological trends with alarm. Our hope is that we will be brave enough to dare to try new ideas. We’ve been given a great opportunity and a great responsibility to extend and improve the future of health and safety for uncounted thousands of people.”