5 Principles for collaborating in a crisis
In the current climate, there is a huge incentive for multi-stakeholder projects, with a particular focus on health solutions
As the world battens down the hatches, digital collaboration and diverse working groups have become essential corporate tools. Yet, still more than half of the attempts to collaborate still fail due to several barriers. From my experience, I would like to share some practical tips to nurture a smooth working relationship between the sometimes very different worlds of start-ups and corporates; as the world desperately strives for a solution to coronavirus.
Moving towards more alignment between industry, academia and the startup world is key to fostering innovation in healthcare. And we can see powerful examples of this taking place right now all over the world.
To fast-track a solution to coronavirus, the European Commission has sent out a call for startups and SMEs with technologies and innovations that could help treat, test or monitor the outbreak to urgently apply to the next round of funding from the European Innovation Council. Startups with coronavirus solutions can apply for €164 million. Likewise FoundersLane received over a quarter of a million astounding responses to our call for solidarity and one standout initiative has been selected for further support.
The benefits of such collaboration are multifold
- Medicine incl. antivirals and vaccines can reach market and scale production faster
- Startups can fast-track product development
- The corporate can tap into the creativity of the startup world
- The corporate can test-drive new products with less risk
Indeed, CEOs of both corporates and start-ups share the common strategic goals of growing their company and finding rapid solutions. When it comes to fighting a global pandemic every minute counts. Even partnerships with potential disruptors can be beneficial in times like this because of the difficulty for an established business to innovate or establish truly radical and disruptive business units, internally.
However, there are potential pitfalls from misalignment to lack of senior management commitment, which can derail an innovation project.
- Align expectations from the start
The shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) available to healthcare professionals has become increasingly problematic as covid-19 cases continue to surge. Thus, this week, a team from MIT launched the mass manufacturing of a new technique to meet the high demand for disposable face shields. Martin Culpepper, professor of mechanical engineering, director of Project Manus, spearheaded the development of a new technique working with several partners from MIT, local-area hospitals, and industry.
Crucially, they aligned on expectations, and agreed on the scope of the cooperation, particularly because the industry partner often finds itself under pressure to show progress at regular intervals.
Indeed, in a bid to manage shareholder expectations, any involvement with a startup must align with the overall strategy of the business. Once the senior management team has agreed, startups from different high-potential sectors can be approached. We can see the drive for this accelerating in the current climate.
Corporate employees are trained and incentivised to follow tried and tested processes, but in a bid to overcome this a digital cocoon can be established with tailored KPIs just for the duration of the digital project, in a bid to nurture out of the box creativity.
Another element that can create a pitfall is when corporates engage with startups that are proposing a radical way of working or a new technology that the corporate is not yet ready to adopt or to experiment with, this inherently leads to a fruitless collaboration.
Thus, clear and direct communication regarding expectations creates the foundations for an effective working relationship. This fundamental agreement should be written in stone and will act as a transparent template for all proceeding interactions. Inducing more commitment from both parties to adhere to their side of the deal.
2. Set key performance indicators for remote collaboration
You manage what you measure is a well–known management aphorism. Companies like Dell work on dozens of projects simultaneously but to ensure that Dell’s startup engagement translates into real culture change and internal learning: entrepreneurial spirit has been added as a key performance indicator for Dell employees. This means that employees need to prove entrepreneurial behaviour, inside their teams or through outreach into the startup community to gather new ideas.
But how does this work in a remote working environment? Workshops all take place digitally now and are much less hands-on due to social distancing. Many executives are discovering that it is much easier than expected to work collaboratively online as long as:
- Video is switched on all the time and never muted
- The agenda is strictly adhered to with a couple of breaks
- People are guided through a section and can ask question afterwards
3. Progress through open source
Collaboration has led to rapid improvements in ventilators; now an essential machine in the fight against COVID-19. Healthcare company Medtronic dutifully released their full design specifications, product manuals, and in the future, their software code for its portable ventilator hardware will be made available.
Furthermore, a team from MIT produced an open-source, low-cost ventilator design and will publish it for free for others to copy and manufacture. There are dozens of other examples, many of which have been documented over on OpenSource.
As a corporate when considering to partner up with a third party, one of the main considerations should be how wide is their network? How deep are they in different industries? What is their reach? Vice-versa for startups weighing up what corporate to work with. It goes both ways.
“Your network is your net worth.”
Porter Gale
4. CEO needs to be all in
If the collaboration is a pet project of the CTO without the full backing of the CEO, you can guarantee that the initiative won’t work out. When it comes to making decisions if the CEO is more interested in optimizing the core business and just playing ‘innovation theatre’ he will see it as a waste of time and if resources are required to build something scaleable they won’t be accessible.
It helps in these situations to create an independent growth board. The growth board will have sufficient distance from the core business to allow it enough space to grow beyond the organizational bureaucracy, this can work effectively to bypass the CEO and allow the collaboration to be managed independently and work together KPIs set individually by the team of experts. But at some point, the CEO, of course, will need to be convinced, that the partnership is making progress and much of the analysis will be centred around the initial expectations for deliverables.
“You cannot transform working with startups into core business without the CEO being a convinced believer. If you don’t have someone at the top who believes in your program, it won’t fly.”
Javier Santiso, CEO and General Partner of Mundi Ventures
5. Know your long-term strategy
Many large companies decide to engage with a startup before they have defined their long-term strategy, putting the digital cart before the horse. Fundamentally, the company needs to have a plan for how their business will look and feel in the long-term before it teams up with a startup. It makes no sense to engage in digital initiatives without a firm understanding of the future vision for your company. Once this vision is in place, collaborating with a startup can be used as a tool/vehicle to drive towards the vision.
Anything else is just theatre and will result in a piecemeal attempt at innovation.
