Catalunya Emprèn Pentagrowth Innovation Experience
By Marina Henriques, Innovation Consultant. (Originally published in English)
Every year, the Entrepreneurship Area of Catalunya Emprèn, a programme powered by the Generalitat de Catalunya that promotes public and private actions of value to the entrepreneur, organises a trip with technicians from its networks around the Catalonian region. This journey aims to create an atmosphere of inspiration and train them in entrepreneurship through an international and significant experience. Due to the disruption of COVID-19, Catalunya Emprèn decided to provide an international innovation experience through digital tools, creating a virtual community with multidisciplinary profiles.
Ideas for Change (Barcelona), through the Pentagrowth Academy, together with Metabolic (Amsterdam) and with the participation of Bold&Open (Nice), designed a tailor-made programme that provides the conceptual and methodological resources for local Entrepreneurship and Innovation managers to drive the activity of their departments with the most positive impact.
Near the end of 2020, the Catalunya Emprèn Pentagrowth Innovation Experience took place in a virtual space with around 30 participants. This four-day event provided a hands-on methodology for disruptive business model design with personalised canvases and activities. Moreover, our international team facilitated each group while using digital & collaborative tools such as Miro or Slack.
Four sessions of inspiration and co-creation
Throughout the workshops, we covered a broad range of themes: from impactful entrepreneurship, The Green Deal and the circular economy, alternative finance, social and collaborative economy and disruptive innovation. Bringing multiple players together with a shared purpose is key to creating a better system. Our purpose during the sessions was to create positive impact for the entrepreneurship and innovation scene. Throughout the week, we analysed the opportunities in these fields that can build a better ecosystem. Following the Pentagrowth methodology, we would like to share our insights with you.
1. “Open systems and the disruptive mindset.”
Anticipate. Instil an open, disruptive and ambitious mindset. Define your #FutureThatRocks.
How can we build a new normal where we create high impact businesses that support social and regenerative ecosystems while maintaining thriving businesses?
This was the main question that Jaime Arredondo, international writer, coach and Founder of Bold&Open, addressed in his workshop "New levers to speed tenfold the building of a meaningful future".
2. “Systems thinking: identifying the root causes. More with less, and better. Internal abundance.”
Unbundle. Harness the internal potential: open and broaden the vision of what is available within the organisation.
Chris Monaghan, Founding Partner & Ventures Director at Metabolic, presented the Systemic Theory of Change framework and took attendees through multiple practical examples of the systemic venture business model canvas.
He also introduced us to the Systems Change toolkit, which includes a suite of educational tools that can help entrepreneurial individuals and teams along the journey of building a venture with systemic impact. While the process of building a high-impact social venture can be messy and iterative, the toolkit is designed to bring entrepreneurs through the early stages of the process in a way that integrates key approaches like systems thinking, circular economics, human-centered design thinking, service design, and community co-design.
"We need bold new thinking that can address the enormous challenges we face, and working models must be highly scalable and financially sustainable to have the amount of impact that is necessary." - Metabolic
As an end to day 2, Javi Creus presented The Observatory of Emergent Capabilities. This report by Ideas for Change illustrates different strategies to overcome the current crisis we are living in and gives multiple examples of how organisations are reformulating their business models, professionals are reinventing themselves and society is transforming.
3. “Discovering external abundance: the potential of what's out there and the next technological and social wave. Disruptive combinations.”
Explore & Combine. Open and broaden the vision of what is available outside the organisation. Formulate a pitch combining internal and external abundance with the next technological and social wave.
On the third day, the Ideas for Change team gave an in-depth presentation on their Pentagrowth methodology, which aims to design disruptive business models born by creating virtuous combinations.
We worked in teams to co-create business ideas and explore possible synergies in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Participative technologies, a stakeholder match-making platform and positive impact clusters were some of the ideas that emerged during this activity.
4. “Alternative Investment. Impact finance workshop”
In the last session, Seadna Quiqley, Finance Director and Circular Finance Lead of Metabolic, provided an overview of the innovative funding instruments available for impact-driven startups and ventures beyond traditional exit-focused equity investment.
Traditional, exit-focused equity investment often doesn't meet the specific funding requirements of impact-driven startups, and there are various emerging instruments that blend elements of grant, debt, and equity funding to deal with the specific risk and return profiles of these ventures. He also discussed different forms of investor exits that are more suitable to impact ventures.
Seadna provided a comprehensive overview of the different instruments available for funding impact-ventures. Additionally, he explained how the emerging ownership structures that help founders and early-stage funders structurally embed the mission-drivenness of the company into the setup while still providing investors with the liquidity they need. Lastly, he showed how portfolios can be managed to maximise impact while still achieving investment returns.
Let's create better systems
As we have seen in the Catalunya Emprèn Pentagrowth Innovation Experience, sharing a purpose is of paramount importance to build something worthwhile. As Javi Creus pointed out in his latest article, purpose is the key element that configures the whole system. From logistics, to holistic healthcare, mobility and energy. Let's activate a system with radical and shared purposes, let's build #FuturesThatRock together!
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