Lights – camera – action!

In January, Hidde Van Manen, Rutger Planken, Willem Schüngel and Anke Le Guével sat down to broadcast our first ever live interactive panel conversation, coined “Tales from the Trenches”.

The goal: to openly and honestly speak about the failures, frustrations and issues when embarking on a corporate venture project, and share personal stories and insights on strategy, governance, team setup and incentives. Over the two hour broadcast, the four Business Model Innovation experts covered a multitude of topics and took questions from the audience.

“Tales from the Trenches” – an introduction

The premise

As it often happens, the concept of “Tales from the Trenches” was conceived during a conversation between two peers on the inner workings of a project – what worked but specifically, what did not work.

“When talking with like-minded people in similar roles, I experienced a high level of energy flowing with great stories being shared.” Said Planken. “Most of them were about the hard work and efforts required as well as epic fails. After such a conversation with Hidde, we both thought it would be a worthwhile experiment if we could get those stories to be shared with a wider audience.”

Van Manen agreed: “My inspiration came from the conversations I have on this topic with my various clients. Time and again, the same questions and challenges arise. It struck me that there are so many nuances and particularities to get from ‘theory’ to ‘success’.”

“There is no silver bullet, and a great deal depends on the people involved. Many of my clients struggle with innovation, because it is their passion but it can be tough in a corporate setting. They can feel alone and without support. This insight led to the idea of talking with people about the personal side of these business adventures.”

“One of the things we really connected on was that innovation is critical in the long term, but also recognizing that it’s actually very hard”

The conversation

You can watch some of the highlights of the four panelists sharing their experiences and answer questions from the audience on this blog as well as read some of their insights below.

Van Manen kicked off the conversation: “I think one of the things we really connected on was that innovation is critical in the long term, but also recognizing that it’s actually very hard. And to do it in a corporate context is very complex to get it right. The personal side of it can sometimes be quite a struggle.”

Schüngel concurred and added his observation from his long career leading numerous corporate venture projects: “What we’ve learned the hard way is that there’s no one-size-fits-all – so unfortunately over the course of my career I’ve seen too many companies who have tried to apply these innovation methods and principles and put people and processes in place… but they haven’t really cracked their ‘why’ yet. So they have people running around but they’re not necessarily running in the right direction.”

Throughout the discussion, the panelists shared practical examples of venture projects they were a part of – some that were successful and some that were not. Planken for example looked back at his time at a leading independent navigation and map technology specialist, who in his opinion took a very productive approach into the concept of corporate innovation.

“One example that pops up in my mind is when I was when I was working for TomTom.” Planked said. “I think it was 15 years ago when the company already saw that the business model that there were extremely successful with was about to slow down. I still recall that the CEO said to us ‘Listen, here is significant money – I want you guys to build me nationwide traffic information on a global scale; do whatever it takes.’ That was one of the strongest examples that I encountered because there was a very strong intentionality.”

And when a member of the audience asked for advice for new starters in the venture adventure, Le Guével offered some very tangible counsel.

“Disruptive innovation is system innovation. It’s not about changing a few parts; it’s about making a new whole affecting all the parts.” Said Le Guével. “What really worked for us is to have a community of venture leaders; to have them learn from each other, mentor each other. That is very valuable support, people being able to talk to other people in ventures. They run into similar issues and problems.”

Great advice indeed – and especially poignant when it comes to corporate venturing. Openly sharing what worked, and more importantly what didn’t work among a community of peers is one of the most powerful sources of experiences, knowledge, and ultimately, learnings.

“Does the owner of the customer relationship buy into what you’re doing?”

Over to you

At SparkOptimus, we always aim our events to be as interactive as possible. During the panel conversation the audience was asked their opinion on the topics the panelists covered – so we’ll finish with the question that was the premise of the whole broadcast. You can watch Van Manen ask the question below – and if you want to let us know what you think, you can drop him a line here!

What do you think? Let us know!

Looking for more inspiration for your venture journey? Why not read our article series on Corporate Venturing here.

2023 has got to a fantastic start here at SparkOptimus, and not least because 9 new Sparkies are joining our Amsterdam office across several departments! A very warm welcome to all of you – we’re excited to have you on board!

If you’re also looking to join the change leaders of the future, check out our current international vacancies here.

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This blog was inspired by chapter 7 (“People Change”) of our new book Disruption in Action and the online panel discussion with 20 woman business leaders on leading the people change in digital we hosted based on it.

Angie is a digital leader at a large multinational. Every two or three months she meets for coffee with a group of peers in different industries to catch up and share change stories.

Angie: Hi everyone, and good to see you all again. Is it ok if I start, because I’ve got something I’d like to get your thoughts on. This quarter we did a survey at our company asking people what pain points they were having with digital, and the responses were pretty challenging. The top ones were all things like, ‘Where do I start?’ ‘Do I need to reinvent myself?’ ‘Do I need to learn super-complicated stuff like neural nets?’ There were also a lot of concerns about digital really being used to police people, or replace them. We thought we’d get specific problems, but this was more a general feeling of fear! We’re trying to reassure people, but that doesn’t make it go away, and I think it’s really slowing down our transformation efforts.

Bea: Right – there’s a lot of fear out there. And with these kinds of existential questions, you can’t answer them because they’re bottomless! But I think they all come from people having an essential story of tech being scary and squeezing people out, and that’s what you need to change. You need to give them a story of tech being great and helping people succeed.

Angie: Right. But how do I do that?

Bea: Well at our company, we recently did a survey too, but we asked people what were their pain points with the current business, not with digital. Then we did a 24 hour hackathon to see what solutions we could come up with using tech, and already, people were really interested. Next we piloted the best ones, and when we started getting positive customer feedback, that really nailed the story. People wanted the solutions, and they wanted those happy customers for their own operations.

Charlie: Yes, to counter fear, you need to give people something concrete. Solving problems they know already is great, or something really simple we did with our new e-commerce platform was to make this funky little visualisation. It just showed a map of the world, and every time we made a sale, it popped up live on the map with an animation. It was of no practical use really, but it got managers going, and suddenly they were much more interested in the platform, and the data, and learning about what they could do with it. Which is funny because a few months earlier, we’d offered training on data analytics, and we’d struggled to get people. So I think it’s important to bring a little fun. Don’t just talk about algorithms and updates – share the beautiful part. Because it can be beautiful.

Daria: I love that. And it really shows how as digital leaders, we can only achieve so much by pulling people along. For change to happen, people have to feel inspired themselves, so it becomes self-propelling at ground level. That’s also why we now always do our digital projects inside the business with mixed teams. We used to have teams of digital specialists working on cool stuff, but like that, it was too easy to become a clique and for everyone else to think, ‘Oh, digital’s not for me.’ But now we always create teams with some specialists and some corporate veterans. And they’re great because they really know the business and the customers and the pain points to focus on, like Bea was talking about. And they also give us credibility in the main business, because they’re the ones people look to when they’re thinking about their own jobs. It’s the veterans that make the story.

Bea: Exactly! We do mixed teams too, and we make a real point of shopping the stories round. We have two people in comms who have the job of getting personal stories from teams and customers in the digital pilots, and putting them out through all our channels so people hear about them.

Angie: I see – it’s a real story-telling effort. Well that’s amazing advice on how to get a groundswell moving, but what about leadership? I get the feeling they’re scared too, but what do they need?

Charlie: I think you have to be concrete with them also. Digital means new ways of working that senior management simply didn’t experience when they were making their way up. So in our company, every year we do a leadership exercise where we put our senior management in charge of an e-store for two days. It’s a real eye-opener for them, and it does two things. Firstly, they see how much faster things move in digital, and how, to respond at that speed, people have to be making decisions much lower down. It just doesn’t make sense to be going back and forth to a boss who isn’t in front of the data. Our senior managers of course have all been schooled in how digital organisations have flatter hierarchies and push operational decisions down, but it’s another thing to see it first-hand. Then the second thing is that it puts senior management up close with customers for those two days. I think it’s very easy when you’re at the top to become more and more involved in higher-level problems and abstractions, but when you’re running an e-store yourself, and faced with a customer who just wants their widget – it’s a great reality check! It’s funny though, because even though we all need these reality checks, and they create a lot of value, they’re always the first thing to get dropped from peoples’ calendars.

Bea: Ha – that’s true! And I agree it’s important leaders stay grounded in reality, but I’d also like to add something about vision, because I think that’s important too. I know in our company, a lot of our leaders have come up internally, and been part of building it in a certain way, and that means it’s not always easy for them to embrace doing something radical to it. But if you don’t have that desire for change at the top, nothing happens. The next level down gets the signal to stay in the comfort zone, and that gets passed down and down through the company. So something we do to keep the vision fresh at the top is regularly send our leaders to visit to tech companies and round tables, and they even did a trip to Silicon Valley. That’s a terrible cliché, I know, but they got some meaningful things out of it. In particular, I can remember our COO coming back and saying, ‘Wow, there really is a very different way to run a global company.’ And it was things like, they have five layers to their hierarchy, and we have 16; or, they have a strategy with three points, and we have 20 strategic priorities, as well as six key pillars and nine drivers and what not. It’s fundamental stuff, but like Charlie was saying, it’s concrete. So I think leaders need that concrete example of a different kind of company to really build the vision and the desire to change.

Daria: I agree with that, but also, I know for my board at least, there have to be concrete business numbers in there too. Maybe we’re more conservative, but as soon as I start talking about vision, the senior leadership is bound to say, ‘Show me the money!’ So for all our C-level meetings, I make sure I go in with a clear business case. Something like: here are the opportunities for AI in our industry, here’s how we can use it to lower costs and drive sales, here’s the 5 year plan with projections, and so on. So I just want to add that to the mix, because for us, that’s what gets the funds, and gives us the licence to play.

Angie: Alright! So to sum up, I just need to convince leaders to take a reality check, form a new vision, and show them the money! Easy!

Daria: That’s right! No – as we all know, it’s very complex. And even though we’re supposed to be digital leaders, the real challenges are always in these kinds of people questions. But that makes me think of one last thing – and I wonder if anyone else has experienced this: when leading a digital transformation, I find it’s often best to lead from behind. By which I mean, there are so many different people involved, and different functions and moving parts throughout the company, that if you try leading on all fronts, you end up leading on none. But if you give parts of the transformation away to people, and lead more from behind, while letting them feel like they’re driving it and getting the wins, it works much better. But it takes a slightly lower-ego leadership style. Does anyone recognise that?

Bea: Yes, definitely. In fact I think lower ego goes for a number of aspects of digital: you have to listen to data, let go of opinions, push decisions down, empower others.

Charlie: Using tech to empower people is exactly what digital is all about!

Daria: They just need the tech and some positive stories to believe that it’s for them.

Angie: This coffee should be one of the stories!

What a fantastic way to finish Q3 of 2022: 7 new Sparkies have been added to the team in September. It’s great to have you all on board!

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At SparkOptimus, we work towards ensuring a neutral or positive sustainability impact in both our client work and internal operations.

We recognize that carbon offsetting is an important step along the journey to net-zero emissions. For this reason, in addition to continuously reducing our carbon footprint, we have committed ourselves to offset our emissions.

What is a carbon offset?

Carbon offset means activity that compensates for the emission of carbon dioxide (CO2) or other greenhouse gases (measured in carbon dioxide equivalents [CO2e]) by providing for an emission reduction elsewhere.

Carbon offset schemes allow individuals and companies to invest in environmental projects around the world in order to balance out their own carbon footprints. Revenue generated from the purchase of carbon offsets is usually invested in environmentally friendly projects, like supporting community development, protecting ecosystems or installing efficient technology to reduce or remove emissions from the atmosphere.

Who to do this with?

To select the best organization to partner with, we developed a set of criteria, among which are:

• B Corp Certification: our partner should be a Certified B Corp, meeting the highest standards of social & environmental performance
• Partners’ fee minimization: our partner should devolve the highest share of funds possible to finance the offsetting project
• High quality standards: the project(s) offered by our partner should be certified under recognized, rigorous national and international standards
• Permanence: the project(s) should provide long-term or permanent benefits
• Connection to values: the project(s) goal & characteristics should be connected to SparkOptimus’ values

We are excited to share we have decided to offset our carbon emissions with Clear!

Clear’s mission is to use technology & innovation to empower individuals and organizations to easily take environmental action now. They have 15+ years experience in the voluntary carbon offset market with QAS-certified offsets, and have been recognized as one of the “Best for the World” B Corps of 2022. Their projects range from providing poor rural families with energy-efficient cookstoves to providing renewable energy through gas capture.

We are eager to start our carbon offset journey with Clear!

What a fantastic way to start into 2022. 9 new Sparkies have been added to the team recently. Great to have you all on board!

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What do the founder of e-mobility startup Felyx, the strategy and operations lead at Spotify, and the chief strategy officer at Infinitas Learning have in common? They’re all alumni of SparkOptimus! Friday before Halloween, a big group of ex-Sparkies returned to our Amsterdam office to catch up with each other over snacks and drinks.

Reconnecting was indeed what everybody had been missing for a while, as the pandemic has kept us from sending off leaving Sparkies properly for while. Usually, there were proper goodbye parties and speeches that reminisced on how the person has grown and revived fun memories. As this tradition had to be paused for quite a while, it was high time to make up for it during the alumni party.

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Not only old colleagues gave the alumni their 3 minutes of fame, also SparkOptimus co-founder Alexandra Jankovich took the time to highlight and celebrate the exciting new career paths of the alumni in a speech. Very intriguing to see to which companies the Spark-spirit has spread!

Marinus Israël, for example, is now CPO at Lepaya, a company offering ‘blended learning’ trainings for professionals. He’s not the only person who switched to education, on ex-Sparkie is now chief strategy officer at Infinitas Learning.

Maarten Poot co-founded Felyx, a sharing platform for e-scooters that operates in many Dutch and German cities. While one conquers e-mobility, another ex-Sparkie makes waves in the eyewear market: Marijke van Ark is the head of strategy and business intelligence at Ace & Tate.

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Two old colleagues found their next challenge in rapid grocery delivery services Flink and Zapp. Similarly, two ex-Sparkies went to investment company HAL investment.

If we look at media companies, we find Luisa Eymer who is now strategy and operations lead at Spotify, and Felix van der Sommen, chief digital officer at Keesing.

This was only a small selection of the incredible careers ex-Sparkies are currently having. We can’t wait to hear even more of it at the next alumni event!

After a period of only seeing most of our colleagues from the chest upwards during video calls, it was time for a real get-together again. This time, the SparkOptimus team took the latter part of the motto ‘work hard, play hard’ rather literally: We met for a fun game-day at the western fringes of Amsterdam.

 

 

But first the work: The day started early with a training session for all managers. Removed from the daily business, the team learned, discussed, and brainstormed the morning away in one of the repurposed hangars at the location. After lunch, the rest of the Sparkies, coming from the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland – all vaccinated or tested – joined for the rest of the program. Even a few of the new-joiners who will start early next month bravely took the opportunity to meet their new colleagues in this special environment.

 

 

Grouped randomly in different teams, all Sparkies set to the first task: come up with a name for their game team, design a team flag and practice a team cheer! When all chants were demonstrated and ranked, the teams were ready for the real “Robinson” survival challenges. Redirecting water, solving puzzles, cracking codes, making fire, and building a slingshot – these and all the other tasks could only be solved when working together as a strong team!

 

 

 

Next to learning how to ‘fight’ a colleague with a rope, the Sparkies surely got to see some surprising facets of their teammates’ personalities playing each of the games.

With all riddles solved and the prizes collected, it was finally time to mingle with a few cool drinks and a delicious barbeque. With the great weather and the sand at their feet, some Sparkies even had some extra energy for a match of beach volleyball!

What a great way to finally get together with the whole team to celebrate the summer!

While data-driven decision making is a must for most modern businesses, educational institutions are typically less data-driven. For our pro-bono program SOcial, a team of Sparkies, together with the management of a local education foundation, mapped out the potential of data for their school project and implemented practical processes with relevant KPIs with the educators.

 

 

To increase education equality and quality in Rotterdam, the philanthropic organization “Stichting De Verre Bergen” (SDVB) has created a new education foundation: “Stichting Epos Onderwijs Rotterdam”. SDVB focuses on making the city of Rotterdam better and stronger, by developing, supporting, and executing social programs. The first project of the education foundation is establishing the elementary school “Het Epos” in Rotterdam-Zuid. The school aims to boost the growth and talent development of the children in the neighborhood, and to give those children – who have not always had the same opportunities as other kids – every tool to thrive. The foundation has decided that one of the key pillars to make this school succeed, is data. And to better understand how to improve their education quality and operations through data, they approached SparkOptimus.

 

The untapped potential of data in education

Although data is on the agenda of every organization these days, data in education is a relatively unexplored field. It didn’t take long to realize that there was a huge opportunity: With data, teachers can much more accurately decide on how to distribute attention and resources more efficiently. And while staff members are permanently under the pressure of having insufficient time and resources, they still need to rely on very subjective decision making, as objective measures are difficult to obtain. Increasing objectivity by any measure may in that sense be even more effective in these settings than anywhere else.

One great example of the untapped potential is the use cases the school identified and implemented: Mapping children’s performance on both development position (grades) as development speed (improve in grades). This enables teachers to identify what children to invest more time in: Children that have relatively good grades, but have dropped in development speed, might require some more attention than originally thought, and children that seem to be behind on their development, but have high development speed, don’t require as much help as initially assumed. Based on this more objective information, the school can now create sharp monthly plans.

 

 

Converting corporate lessons to an educational setting

At the beginning of the engagement, we pulled together an enthusiastic team, being fully aware of the challenge ahead.  Although we felt comfortable with data subjects in corporate environments, the overarching issue to solve here was how to translate those lessons learned to an effective data-driven way of working in an educational setting. To jointly succeed, we had to find solutions to four key questions:

• How do we translate the highly qualitative themes in education (e.g., child engagement, happiness, …) into actionable and measurable data?
• What are the core decisions to be made, on every level of the organization, to achieve the school’s ambitions?
• How do we incorporate data-driven decision making and working rhythms into existing working methods of schools?
• How do we collect all this data, without it becoming a big administrative burden or giving the children the feeling they are in an experimental lab?

We set out to jointly tackle these questions in three workshops. We were in for quite a ride…

 

Workshops and plenty of coffee

In the first workshop, we shared relevant knowledge on creating KPI trees and embedding them into an organization. We then jointly identified KPIs on all relevant functions in the school, ranging from management to educational quality and talent development. Identifying these KPIs would allow us to understand, e.g., how well children are developing certain hard skills and soft skills, but also, e.g., how well the school engages with the children’s parents.

In the second workshop, we prioritized KPIs and discussed how they could be practically measured, without overburdening staff or creating a bureaucratic monster – a pitfall that is all too common in these settings. The key is to rely as much as possible on data you already collect and to make a strict assessment about what data you really need, vs. how it is collected. Always stay pragmatic!

In the final and third workshop, we determined how to make the data actionable. In our view, this is one of the most overlooked topics. Often, efforts of using data are wasted by merely displaying results and not considering the “so what”. This results in the all-too-familiar settings of fancy dashboards with complicated graphs and plenty of data but nobody knowing what to do with it. That’s why we tackled the question of how to “inject” the data outputs into existing processes and working rhythms, targeting the key decision moments, supported by targeted dashboards. This way, educators and staff can actually use the data in their day-to-day job.

 

Going forward

As a result of our joint efforts, Het Epos is now equipped with clear KPIs and dashboards. Together with practical steering rhythms, the processes help to grow the quality of their education and operations to a higher level through data. Their efforts transformed them into a front-runner in data-driven education, which they will only push further in the next years.

At SparkOptimus, we are super excited to have gone through this journey together. Already today, the school applies data-driven insights in the decision making processes, while making big steps towards the future of education, where data will be key.

“Working with SparkOptimus has been a great experience. By asking the right questions, structuring our process and giving experience-based advice they enabled us to make a huge leap forward. The level of commitment of the SO team to the project even though we were a free of charge client was truly remarkable.”
– Hidde Verkade, General director – Stichting Epos Onderwijs Rotterdam

Tech Solutions for Global Challenges – this was the motto of this year’s all-digital edition of CES Unveiled in Paris and Amsterdam.
During a series of sessions titled “Leadership in disruptive times” Alexandra Jankovich talked to European leaders about the lessons learned in the current crisis, sustainability, and adaptability.

Missed the conference? Watch the sessions “Leadership in disruptive times” below.
 
André Hoffmann, Vice-Chairman of the Board, Roche Holding Ltd
“We have decided some years ago that the only way to measure business is for financial flows, but we do not account at any stage of the impact our businesses have on social systems, on human systems, and our natural system. As a shareholder, I would like to know the impact that the companies I’m invested in are having on the planet.” André Hoffman speaks about how businesses can and should be a force for good, the possibilities of technology in medical contexts, and the need to embrace complexity.
 

 
Petri Hofsté, Member of the Supervisory Board at Rabobank, Achmea, Fugro, and Pon Holdings
Petri Hofsté talks about responsible leadership and advocates for a new way to approach education in the future, closing the gap between need and supply of knowledge and skills.
 

 

Benoît Coquart, Chief Executive Officer, Legrand and Vice President- Building, FIEEC
“You need to be humble enough to understand: if [your product] doesn’t fulfill the need of the customer, it will be good for the books, but not for the business.” Benoît Coquart explains how to stay relevant and serve the customer while being “technology-agnostic”.
 

 

Let’s get in touch!