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>> Thanks for coming to the afternoon session.
I think the morning went great
and we had some really good topics and panels
and obviously some really good conversations
and connection going on.
So, keep that up.
They'll be breakout tables in the afternoon
and really encourage you participate on one of them
and let us know what your ideas are for collaborations,
or projects, or challenges or whatever.
Also, there's a survey in the back,
just a little more housekeeping so if you would fill it
out for us and leave it before you have to leave.
We'd really like to get your feedback
on how you felt the meeting went, what else you'd
like to see happen in the future,
how this could be even more effective for you.
So we have two really great speakers this afternoon,
Lisa Pannell, you met already from General Mills
and our first speakers though is Jeff Hamaoui whom we've meet
over the last year or so through some other NASA
collaborative projects.
Jeff is an expert in sustainability
and public/private partnerships
with 15 years experience exploring business models
and unique approaches to social entrepreneurship
and impact to investment.
He currently runs the Cazneau Group that specializes
in the Cazneau Colab Platform that he'll be talking
about today which really is an accelerator
for these public/private partnerships.
And to not take any further time away from him,
I'm going to turn it over to him to give him full time
to explain this model to you
and hopefully stimulate some very good questions.
So Jeff, it's a pleasure to have you here today
and thank you for coming.
>> Thank you very much, Jeff.
Good afternoon.
I'm lavaliered so, in a hurry so if it goes wrong that's why.
Okay. I'm gonna sort of pick up what Craig started
from Procter & Gamble in terms of how do we move
from high concept to actually doing something in terms
of open innovation and in terms of collaboration.
I'm good at facilitating and I'm good at conversation.
I'm not very good at presentation
so please feel free to pitch in.
I'm not gonna use slides.
I'm not gonna you know, this isn't a train, it's a discussion
so just talk, ask and I'll be very happy to kind of shift
around to what you actually find interesting.
Just to get a feel for the room.
I actually think this might actually be interesting for all
of you as well, how many of you go to meetings like this,
innovation meetings, or partnership meetings or whatever
with any degree of regularity?
Pretty much everyone.
How many of those meetings lead to ideas
that you find interesting, encouraging?
Again, pretty much everyone so we all go,
we meet some fantastic people and have great ideas.
How many of those lead to specific opportunities
that either your institution
or your company can actually leverage.
One or two hands.
Actually, a couple right down here
in the NASA square, that's good.
This is gonna be really the subject of this discussion,
of the Colab discussion.
And also, I wanna find out some other quick detail points,
orientation points with you.
Who has upfront alignment from their organization
to pull the trigger on a deal if it goes well?
So, if you meet someone here today, who has the authority
to say, let's go will do this?
Okay, there're actually a quite a few hands and I'd expected
that 'cause you were handpicked so to speak.
So we're talking today about innovation and it's innovation
in the context of collaboration.
It's not just ourselves as institutions innovating.
It is ourselves as institutions innovating
with other institutions.
So what we're really talking about in terms
of collaborations is co-design.
It's innovation in the context
of collaboration which is co-design.
We sit here in this room and I always sort of feel
like with the warp speed stuff
and all these incredible photographs
that there should be inspiring music in the background.
It's one of those fantastic NASA moments.
Let's just reiterate the moon shot, sort of data points
that I just find absolutely baffling around the moon shot.
First of all, 400,000 people building 2 million independent
systems that could not fail to get a vehicle to the moon.
It is incredibly humbling for someone like me to come and talk
to NASA about collaboration.
We have a lot to learn from NASA.
We have a lot to learn from what you've achieved in the past,
which is also tremendously exciting.
So there's a good exchange going on here.
Before we start, Craig also mentioned breakthrough problems.
This is very much the type of thing we're gonna be discussing
with regards to Colabs.
We're talking about big problems where multiple parties need
to come together to come up with a solution,
systems opportunities.
This is the stuff that you can't do on your own.
This kind of comes with a health warning.
Anything you can do on your own, you should do on your own.
It's a pain in the neck to have partners.
It's very difficult.
It takes investment and it takes time, so that's that.
Brief introduction to myself, I'm very technically skilled.
I have all the qualifications to allow me to do this work.
I study literature and philosophy
and really learn on the job.
I've been working at the sort of cusp of innovation,
sustainability, and investment for the last 15, 20 years
and this is the job that I've kind of invented.
I enjoy bringing people together.
I enjoy trying to work out how to make
that more efficient and more effective.
And in 1999, I set up a company to do that online and offline,
and then in about 2001 I had a moment where I realized
that it wasn't just a neat lifestyle thing,
but that there's actually about that.
There was actually something valuable there
to doing this work.
I was doing some work with a mobile phone company
in sub-Saharan Africa and we were looking
at collaboration opportunities
around a very specific sustainability challenge.
So you're in Kenya.
We were trying to work out how
to provide a mobile banking platform to the rural poor.
It sounds easy, right?
It's one of those no-brainers.
Yeah, of course, we've got smart phones and this is back in 2001.
Put the phone in the hands of the poor.
They're gonna have banking services.
They're gonna be able to generate credit.
They're gonna be able to generate some kind
of financial profile that they can then leverage onwards.
Sounds easy, but I need a data company.
I need a finance company like a bank of some description,
someone who's actually got the legal authority to do banking.
I need a data basing sort of local IT company.
I need a microfinance company.
I need government approval, policy, all of these stuff has
to line up to make this happen which means it doesn't happen.
By and large, these opportunities,
because they require so many different players don't occur.
It was a privilege.
I was involved.
I didn't really sort of execute, but the light came on.
I was like wow, there is real power to these synergies.
If you can bring people together in concert,
you can have massive impact on people's lives.
You can create green field business opportunities
and you can change the world.
This was genuinely what was exciting to me about it.
But the problem was that the process
for getting there was just horrible.
It was like, hey, I know this guy who knows this guy
and we're gonna get together.
And there's this guy in the government
and he might know something about this.
It's just this sort of very linear who-do-you-know,
what-do-you-know kind of process.
So the challenge for us was how do you build products
and services that go from sort of the big idea
to actual execution, to bringing that system together,
to bringing those people together
that can actually execute against the challenge.
Incidentally, I did do some work with Procter & Gamble as well
and fascinating within P&G, within GE as well who's
in the room, and emerging markets having to bring people
and corral people from within the company
on behalf of the company.
So it's not just external collaboration that was an issue.
It was internal collaboration as well.
So I was gonna-- I thought we would be in a smaller room.
It's kind of a crazy big room, so I was gonna draw
on the walls, but we're gonna do that.
So have to use my arms, it's tough at that.
We've been talking-- Karim have that big funnel up.
This is sort of the open innovation funnel.
Ideas come streaming down sometimes tens,
sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands of ideas.
You do this sort of cherry picking of ideas.
We call it the sort of the big idea harvest.
>> Because this isn't a formal sort of locked in presentation,
I have some commentary on some
of the intrinsic/extrinsic value stuff that we were discussing.
We find that the process in and out of itself,
this kind of open innovation process, engagement process,
is intrinsically valuable to the staff executing it as well,
something that we didn't really seem to discuss in the last two
or three conversations.
Engaging with innovation jams, open innovation, sprints,
anything that kind of gets people on your teams to engage
with new ideas, new perspectives, new communities,
is incredibly valuable in terms of flexing
that innovation muscle if you like.
So there's real value to be explored there.
We've had a big idea.
We get to the harvest piece.
We've got six or seven things that we'd really be interested
in collaborating around.
What do we do?
How do we do it?
This kind of brings us to the sort
of the business as unusual piece.
We're actually all here in this room embarking
on a new type of conversation.
I sort of prodded Jeff at the beginning of the meeting
to say what's unusual about this.
I've worked with the private sector.
I've worked with investment and as an investor,
I've worked with foundations and I've worked with government,
and government doesn't do this.
Government doesn't do this.
You guys are exploring a completely different way
of approaching different types of partners.
You're inviting in people that you couldn't possibly justify
and also the case by case basis looking for those sparks,
looking for those connections and so on.
And I think that what you're collectively doing is exploring
new platforms, new methodologies, and new ways
of collaborating which really address the challenges
that we have in terms of a globalized marketplace,
limited financial resources.
You know, the current sort of financial climate
and so on and so forth.
But also, most importantly, as companies, as investors,
as government agencies, huge global challenges that we need
to address together that we need to meet together.
So the tools for intersection, interaction, and collaboration
and innovation, co-design, co-innovation,
lots of buzz words, are gonna be critical.
So this is a really exciting place to be.
I'm thrilled to be here on this journey with you.
My own personal vision for all of this work is
to build the art of collaboration.
How do we bring people together effectively?
There's a science to it and I think a lot of sort of the tools
that we've been looking at, metrics and websites and so on
and so forth, is part of it, but there is an art to it.
So I'm gonna steal a slide of Jeff's.
So I would have drawn it and it's a four square matrix 'cause
like Karim as a consultant, matrices are very helpful,
and it's about the four ways to collaborate.
This is a lot of the variety of the presentations
that NASA has been doing in this area.
I think it's a really useful framework.
Four boxes, top left, innovation model, top right,
innovation community, bottom left, elite circle,
and bottom right, consortium.
These top boxes are online platforms.
They're open collaboration-type platforms.
It's the stuff that we've spent the majority
of the morning talking about.
The bottom two boxes, the elite circle
and the consortium are what I'm gonna talk about now.
We've got idea where at that end of the funnel,
what do we do with it?
Okay so another drawing.
Think of a python that swallowed an egg, big mouth.
That's the open innovation piece,
that's the open innovation funnel
and then it has to close down.
The closing down process is, okay, we've got idea.
Who needs to be involved?
How do we get internal alignment?
My question at the beginning was around internal alignment.
You're coming to this meeting.
How many of you have a very clear mandate around the types
of opportunity, the types of goal,
the types of institutional metrics that you have to meet
to make a collaboration viable whether it's impact,
whether it's technological development,
whether it's financial return on investment or whatever.
These things are kind of critical, right?
As you come in, you need to be aligned internally
so that you can then meet people externally and understand how
to collaborate better together.
So our Colab process works together
with the different stakeholders,
tries to understand what their internal alignment is
and their external goals are.
The egg piece, so you've worked
out what the opportunity spaces are.
You're worked out what the drivers, the alignments,
and so on, and so forth are.
The egg piece is where it opens out again.
So we have the big open mouth piece
and then you've got the egg piece.
We open out again, bringing new partners,
bringing different people from across the system,
public sector, private sector, investors, thought leadership,
academia, innovation, and whimsy.
Do not underestimate the value of having those kinds
of whimsical players in the room, in the system,
at the table, sort of throwing down crazy ideas
of how this might work.
We're talking 50 people here.
This is not a big system type of event.
Fifty to a hundred maximum is typically where we work
and we convene them together.
At the end of the convening, there's a sort of decompress.
Here are the opportunities, acceleration, and close.
And I'll get into those phases specifically as we go through.
So, and just to kind
of delineate the phases more clearly, phase zero is kind
of systems innovation.
It's what's the opportunity.
You guys are now in a phase zero type format.
You don't really know what you're gonna collaborate around,
where the innovation or the opportunity is,
but you're here to find out.
Phase zero should yield those types of answers to you.
We then drive into opportunity spaces,
very specific opportunities.
In this room, there may be half a dozen.
Let's convene the system.
Let's convene the players.
Let's bring them together.
Specific deals developed, transacted against
and closed implementation, analysis--
impact analysis, and learning.
That's basically what a Colab is.
I talked about the art of collaboration.
There's a really interesting paper and I'll put it
up on your website by a guy called David Lane
and another one called Robert Maxfield of University
of Modena and Stanford as well.
They kind of baked out this concept
of generative relationships.
What does it take to create generative relationships?
And they have five key points
that I thought was super interesting.
Coherence of strategy.
So the people working together have a coherence
of strategy towards a common goal.
Complementarily of tactics.
There's a world of pain contained
in that one statement there.
Complementarity of tactics means
that my operating units privately or publicly
in my institution are lined up behind this.
Executive permission: The ability to pull the trigger.
Yes, we're gonna do this.
There's nothing worse than getting into a relationship,
into collaboration and then having the string yanked
out from underneath you by your boss
or your boss's boss, or whomever.
So that clarity upfront helps us build those relationships later.
Line permission and support and mutual reinforcement.
These deals, these opportunities have to be mutually reinforcing.
Go back
to the telecommunications case in Africa.
The non-profits benefited.
The government benefited.
The communities benefited.
The corporation benefited.
Investors benefited.
That's how that system was mutually reinforcing.
Research and alignment.
So that first phase, first box.
Clarity of goals, granted permissions,
you need to have your internal institutional permissions
to go ahead if you find what you're after and you need
to know that you're gonna be backed.
If you find it, we'll pull the trigger.
We'll make it happen.
You need to be very clear what your intentions are
and what your internal hurdles are to saying yes and no.
Once you have that clarity,
then the discussions become an awful lot clearer.
If we're looking for deals that have
to reach half a billion dollars within 10 years,
that means that there's a whole swath of things
that we don't even need to be discussing.
If we're looking for things that would generate ideas that means
that there's a whole sort of things
that we should be discussing, et cetera, et cetera.
They act as filters, knowing what you're trying to achieve
as you go into these deals, then allows you
to select more clearly and communicate more clearly.
It also determines who gets in the room.