The Rising Members of Tech Hubs
Who knew tech hubs aren’t just for entrepreneurs and freelancers?
If I asked you to go into a co-working space and tell me who is working there, what would you say? I know I’d immediately jump to startups, freelancers, and maybe your oddball who no one really knows what they do. The last thing I would expect to find is large multinational corporations but that’s exactly what you will find in the Hague Tech hidden amongst the startups and consultants. Samsung, Ikea, ING, Google, and other first tier corporates have worked within the Hague Tech through workshops, co-creation, and joining as members. At first glance it might not be obvious what these large organizations are gaining, the same organizations many entrepreneurs leave to build startups in places like the Hague Tech. These organizations are benefiting greatly from the ability to create and utilize temporary teams built from independent industry specialists. Ronen Mendelovitz, a member of the Hague Tech wrote a great piece on creating high-performance teams from a community (I’d highly recommend giving it a read here). This idea of being able to create flexible, motivated, and fresh thinking teams from a community is new and exciting.
Social Impact at the Push of a Community
Setting up a community to corporate project is a novel endeavor that raises a number of new interesting problems to tackle. What I wanted to figure out is first, how do you align the goals between two groups that on the surface are massively different. And second, how do you build a team that strikes the unique balance of multifaceted skills and “execution excellence” as Thomas van Oortmerssen, director of business development at The Hague Tech and the architect behind the community team, stated. The task of aligning goals and creating a collaborative mission ended up being an easy exercise as Samsung and The Hague Tech both strive to work on impact and socially responsible projects. As Thomas put it, “[Samsung’s] societal impact matches with what we can do with our community so it was a natural fit.” To corporations looking to build societally impactful technology, Samsung has pioneered a new path in cooperating with communities built around that goal, based on earlier success with their ‘Molengeek’ project in Brussels, Belgium
A Developer, a Freelance Designer, a PR Expert, and Samsung Walk into a Classroom…
When I went out in search of how this innovative partnership between The Hague Tech community and Samsung came about, I went to Markolf von Ketelhod (or as we know him, Marki) to find out how the team came about from such an original situation. But all Marki wanted to talk about was how exciting the project was and how it gave him the unique opportunity to work with the resources of a multinational corporation, something he never could have envisioned happening as a freelancer and budding entrepreneur. Eventually, I realized I would have to go to the source of the team in Thomas. I was shocked at how organically the team arose, starting from just one conversation within the community. Thomas asked Brian Gharibaan of Jongens van Techniek, a software development firm housed within The Hague Tech, where he could source talent for creating an application together with Samsung. Immediately Brian knew he had the right “Jongen” (Dutch for “dude”) for the job. Silvia van Wingerden was our dude! Silvia is not only a female coder but was perfect for the project having previously worked on developing apps for education and educators. Silvia, knowing the app would need a killer design, suggested Marki after they’d worked on an internal community project the month before.
Marki was quickly on board and now this was starting to look like a team. But what could be better to our new team than an expect in leadership and team development? That’s where Ronen, the same Ronen I mentioned earlier, joined up. While Ronen was being toured around by our community manager, he had a chance meeting with Thomas and it quickly became clear how great of a fit Ronen would be to the newly formed team as he is an organisation consultant and facilitator.
But this new team still lacked a bridge between the corporate and community worlds. Luckily enough that’s exactly where Thomas fit in, our own PR ace up our sleeve. A team built by organic connections and recognition of the talent around everyone, there’s high hopes for what can be accomplished now and in the future. We are still experimenting and learning but we have now set a framework for how to build successful corporate to community relationships and teams. But what we know for sure, is that community plays a central role in our success and will continue to be the foundation of our collaborations moving forward.
If you want to explore the opportunity to unlock the power of the The Hague Tech community or have questions about how to join, send an email to thomas@thehaguetech.nl.
Written by Charles Weiler-Ulin
