unfold x B.Amsterdam: fortune telling with fish, frogs and friends.
A workshop on the Future of Startups
“Turn and face the strange, ch-ch-changes” — D. Robert Jones
A month ago we organized an open workshop on the Future of Startups. Why? We had a number of reasons. First of all, we wanted to share our way of working with the world and following our own value of learning by doing — what way better than to let people actually experience what we do + how we do it?
Secondly, we just kicked-off at our new workspace in B.Amsterdam, an ecosystem for Amsterdam startups. We figured it would be nice to connect to our prospective neighbours while at the same time provide something tangible for the community there. So we decided to explore the future of startups. We were curious to hear from all these fellow entrepreneurs; do they ever think about the future, and if so, how do they see their business, and startups in general in there?
Startups might have started off as a disruptive force within the ruling organisational structure, but since this phenomenon has been around for quite some time now, what if they are becoming the new normal?
With unfold, we design and innovate the world of work. Therefore, we ourselves also had an interest here: what issues, worries, ideas are relevant among the businesses of now — that we can help to solve or develop further?
One thing that is certain about futuristic thinking, is that it’s uncertain (yes, that cliché). That’s why it is hard ánd exciting at the same time. The second thing that we took as a given, looking back on the recent history of work, is that things change. And they change quite fast.
So how do we prepare for the unknown? How do we deal with change?
1. Understand the current context
Change can be exciting, but it can also be scary, especially when it’s related to our professional reality where our own business is at stake. To also create a common ground to work from, we asked all the participants to share a worry, fear or story related to their perspective on the future.
We did this by using a tool called “stinky fish”— very useful to get any team on the same page at the beginning of a project. Based on the idea of a dead fish that starts to smell the longer you keep it hidden: sharing (asap) is caring. It directly helped to get to know the different contexts and backgrounds of everyone involved.
2. Understand the phenomenon of change itself
Our first challenge was to frame something as abstract and intangible as change into something concrete and visible. Therefore we broke it down into small characteristics and illustrated those with a story, movie or model.
Element a: change often goes unnoticed — and can be fatal…
Are you familiar with the myth of the boiling frog? It illustrates quite aptly the difference between, and consequences of, gradual vs. sudden perceived change. Basically: when thrown into boiling water, a frog will jump out immediately. However, reversing the steps of the process (putting the frog in the water and then boiling it), will cause the same frog to slowly die (or does it?)
Element b: …especially when you are right in the middle of it
A business owner is often focused on the Skoda, as a metaphor for his/her own (area of) business, instead of zooming out on the context around it. Focusing solely on your own business, without perceiving the change around you, makes it hard to innovate or adapt to future changes. Uber, for example, doesn’t consider themselves active within the taxi, but in the transport industry. Considering yourself part of a bigger industry enables to develop new, related business opportunities — transporting also packages, or food, for that matter.
In a world where everything becomes more integrated it is not enough anymore to stick to “your own” game. As a shoe brand briefed us for developing a new campaign for millennials:
“we do not compete with [insert shoe brand #1] or [insert shoe brand #2] — we compete with Apple”.
For this target group, shoes are a lifestyle item, just as computers. Any time and money spent on the first, is time and money lost on the latter, and vice versa.
Step 3: Zoom out!
To help our participants a little with this, we asked them, under some time pressure, to put as many trends as possible on the wall, related to different categories such as technology and professional skills. What are the trends we see now or see coming in the near future, that are going to change the world of work?
Dotmocratically, they then chose the most relevant trends and zoomed back in, mapping out advantages and disadvantages, as well as creating a visualisation of a future startup answering to the chosen trend. This last visualisation was pitched and subjected to a critical jury of future thinking entrepreneurs (read: the other participants).
Yes, Jim, very good question.
Of course, we are not going to spill all of our fortune told secrets, but we’ll share some of our biggest insights here with you. For the full experience and details we invite you to join one of our future (ha!) workshops.
1.The future is all about people + empathy 👫 👭 👬
Empathy, personal and professional purpose, and human vs. machine/technology were things that came back multiple times during the workshop. In a future where technological innovations develop faster and faster and more and more processes become automated by machines, the question remains where we as humans can still add a distinctive value. What can we do that technology still cannot? It could very well be that the age of technology has slowly made way for the age of empathy.
2. The future of work can be whenever, wherever💃. And we need new tools and methods to adapt to these possibilities.
Looking at future ways of working, it’s apparent that a lot of parameters (such as time, place, professional vs. personal activities) require more and more flexibility. Digital technology expanded professional horizons from a village, to a city, to countries, continents and clouds. The world is our workground!
We experience this ourselves, combining the work for unfold with our other freelance projects, working different times (a-synchronous), at different locations (remote)— which enables freedom but can also complicate decision making processes. As we learned while developing this workshop, is not always effective to all be involved, at least not at every step. But we do all three want to be aware of what we are doing as unfold, and sometimes, because we are a young company, at quite a detailed level. We found out that we needed to combine being-in-the-loop with not-being-involved-in-all-the-steps-made, without losing precious time communicating, explaining, or discussing.
So how to deal with this possibility of a-synchronous and remote working? An example comes from the lovely people of Hanno, a fully remote-working design studio. The “tool” is called PPP: basically a google doc with three categories: Progress, Plans, and Problems — a simple but effective way to communicate status and progress of a project also to people (colleagues but also clients) that are not directly or simultaneously involved. See this article to read more about how they use it internally as well as for client sprints.
3.The future starts now👇
No shit Sherlock. What we mean with this: to be able to start thinking of something unknown that still needs to happen, it is necessary to first assess where (+ how) we are now. And to do this with a group of people that haven’t met before, sometimes takes a little more time than planned. This first step is a very important one though; to get everybody on the same page, it helps to share personal stories and fears (as with the stinky fish) and these stories and fears deserve a stage and safe space to be shared in, which took more time than we initially expected.
We prefer to create a strong and solid base first, even if that takes up precious time in a short workshop. So, also as facilitators, it is important to keep our own creative principles in mind: trust the process — it is ok to let go. Better to have 1 small tool that sticks than to fill up the time with too many that don’t.
So what are your stinky fishes? Are you mostly watching your Skoda or are you paying attention to the surroundings? And are there any trends or insight you recognise from your own context?
We would love to hear it all, and add it to our crystal ball (not only because it rhymes), so we can start making this future happen 🤖🙏.
💌 > love@weunfold.it
ps. you can also just send us a gif if you feel like it.
