Innovation and Collaborations Rosa Jung

All NLCS students, from the moment they step into School, are taught about the value of teamwork. Even First School girls, aged four, are now taught to collaborate with the assistance of Clara, Collaborative Cow, who is one of a series of learning habits. Working, studying, and playing alone is great, but doing it with others is greater. This carries through into after school clubs, lessons, music, drama and of course sport across the whole school.

“Cognitive diversity (diversity of thought, values, and personalities) on a team resulted in 20% more innovation than their noncognitively diverse peer teams”Deloitte, 2018.

By instilling this in us from a young age, NLCS is setting us up to learn how to maximise our potential, personally, professionally and beyond.

Lacrosse games were fun and especially satisfying as we helped each other to improve our skills and win our games. Solo tennis matches were an opportunity for reflection as we learnt to console ourselves or the opponent, whoever won or lost. Orchestra taught me to match the breathing of my fellow string players, as we synchronised the strokes of our bows to the direction of the conductor. NLCS gave me the variety of choice to learn, unwittingly, how to collaborate and be part of a team.

Fast forward to university and masters - it is more of the same, at a higher level. Another few more years into my professional career, the ability to innovate and collaborate matures.

In writing this short piece, I would like to expand on why collaboration and innovation is key in focusing on the role I hold at Antler.

Antler

Antler (www.antler.co) is a global venture capital firm enabling and investing in the world’s most exceptional people building the defining companies of tomorrow, located in 24 start-up ecosystems across six continents. To date, Antler has invested in more than 370 companies in over 30 industries. The entrepreneurs Antler works with are the top 1% globally, selected out of more than 60,000 entrepreneurs evaluated every year.

My role as Senior Program Manager of Benelux, is running nine week residencies in Amsterdam, whereby 60 founders from more than 20 nationalities, with on average 10+ years of experience, join in hopes to find a co-founder, ideate on a problem to solve, validate the solution and ultimately, pitch to us for a chance to raise €100k in return for 12% equity.

From Day 1 of the residency, 60 founders are working in groups, finding innovative ideas over design sprints in different industries. Collaboration is at its highest - there is no “bad” idea, where all outputs are encouraged, taking each one through a methodological way for founders to end up choosing one solution to pursue.

Having run five residencies (most recently helping launch Iberia’s first cohort, hybrid between Madrid and Lisbon), here are my four main takeaways:

1. Creativity comes in all shapes and sizes: it is the incremental and creative solutions that pave the way to greater change. Start small, dream big.

2. Teamwork enhances individuals’ output disproportionately: should one person equal one, in working as a team, 1+1=3. It should maximise and yield more results than two people’s output.

3. Diversity in a team guarantees faster success: there is a limit to one’s scope of thinking and experience, if they pair up with someone similar to them. But should the team be diverse, from the starting point, the ability to bounce different aspects magnifies significantly.

4. Innovation is fast, iterative and abrupt but unless you stay agile and react accordingly, the solution one’s built today may be obsolete tomorrow. Be prepared, be proactive and the rest will follow.

I would like to support the above takeaways with an example - one of the first investments we made during my time at Antler.

Pal (https://www.palhelps.com/)

“We’re building Pal to support families affected by advanced or life-limiting illnesses: whether you are receiving care yourself, or caring for a loved one. We understand the difficulties of receiving or delivering care in a resource-constrained space, which has been traditionally neglected by technology. We’ve set out to transform this space, and we’re starting here. With this app, one functionality, and you.”

The two co-founders, both female, come from different backgroundsone Iranian, the other Norwegian. Religion (or lack of), as well as upbringing have influenced their lives, but when they joined the Antler residency, it was with the hope to start a meaningful company.

The startup is based on Nara’s personal experience in going through the loss of her mum through cancer. The months she and her family shuffled between the hospital and their home, the endless appointments, medications and tests they had to support, she realised the difficulty in keeping track, and lack of information sharing between the stakeholders made the process much harder than it could have been. Hence Pal was born.

Her cofounder, Azi has been instrumental in visualising the solution, making it come alive as a product, framing the problem, solution and team in a way that makes Nara/Azi the inevitable combo to build Pal.

So how does their story support my takeaways? Whilst Nara brought the idea to the table, Azi’s different background of experience brought an edge to the solution that was pivotal to Pal’s success - ability to monetise in a scalable way. Since forming a team, their product has pivoted numerous times, changing to the market needs, validation research molding the features that will be the first to be built. It’s been a delight working with them, seeing their growth and trajectory for the year.

Last words

For those of you reading this article, whether you are a school or uni student, on a gap year, just starting your career, or have been on the career bandwagon for decades or maybe even retired - I am certain you will agree with me about the many benefits of working in a team. The results are better and ultimately, it’s more fun. Innovation and collaboration knows no boundaries, no matter what sector we are intogether, we are truly more powerful than alone.

We have NLCS to thank for shaping us in this way, but it is now up to us to spread our learning and utilise our skills to excel on our journeys ahead. Let’s go live to the fullest!

Please reach out to me if you would like to have a further chat on any of the points discussed: jungrosa@gmail.com.