Our goal is to bring the right people together—whether it’s across a programme cohort, within an innovation centre, across corporate culture, or in a new industry trade body.
These self-sustaining ecosystems drive and sustain transformation, supporting the growth of social groups, companies and business locations. To build them, we outline a strategy that includes:
The right players
Whether we’re building an innovation centre or creating a community inside your existing organisation, we bring the right players together to accomplish your goals. They can include start-ups, venture funds, engineers, students, academic experts, professional service providers, corporate clients, government procurement teams, expert mentors and successful scale-ups.
By giving each of these essential players a complementary reason to participate, we create the necessary conditions for collaboration. The communities we have created have gone on to reform policy, shift market dynamics, drive novel technology adoption, lobby for better access and equality, and much more. Here’s an example
Innovation ecosystems depend on a sense of community—and when resources, ideas, talent, and tactical advice are shared and recirculated, it contributes to long-term sustainability. The best innovation projects inspire people to get involved, create mechanics for people to contribute, and allow stakeholders to reap the opportunities presented by the collective cluster.
In 2013, the UK government tasked us with convening the fintech community in London. Following the global financial crisis, there was a clear need to surface the market opportunities and challenges faced by innovators and entrepreneurs after the financial crisis.
Accordingly, we were asked to create a new trade body for financial services—one that would bring small and large players together to increase the sector’s diversity, consumer choice and economic resilience.
The result was Innovate Finance. We were responsible for company set-up, fund-raising, business modelling, branding, marketing, launch, and programming which included Open University’s FinTech101, the IF Global Summit and a number of international trade missions.
