Atelier WeekNotes w/c 31 July 2023
Designing a Net Zero Heat Innovation Lab. Mentoring a climate start-up. ReadingNotes.
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (What’s needed, What’s ready? What can we do? What next?). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
Apologies for a late edition. It was a big week before going on holiday, inter-railing around Europe for three weeks. I had thought I'd finish on the Eurostar, but I'm currently typing while gliding from Paris to Geneva. The next WeekNotes will be for the last week in August.
This week:
Designing a Net Zero Heat Innovation Lab
Mentoring a climate start-up
ReadingNotes.
Designing a Net Zero Heat Innovation Lab.
Step. 5/DEVELOPING. Themes. Climate. Transforming economies. Innovation chain.
This week I produced the finished wireframe for the Net Zero Heat Innovation Lab (NZHIL), where I am working for Carbon Limiting Technologies, who are supporting Innovate UK.
I introduced the NZHIL in w/c 12 June 2023. in short, a 5-day residential workshop, where 40 people start from barely knowing each other, and end with new consortia bidding for around £1m each for commercial-scale demonstrators on how we could rapidaly decarbonise non-residential heat.
Back in early June, I had created a first cut, for other members of the facilitation team to critique and make suggestions. This week I took all of that feedback, and turned it into an agenda of timed sessions.
Throughout, I was putting front of mind the experience I wanted these people to have. The primary success is having good applications, and a secondary success is the kernel of an on-going community, who are a key part of delivering Net Zero Hear of the many decades it will take us to get there.
Dawn. Help people to get to know each other, the different views on the challenges of Net Zero heat, and what is a success for these 5 days. Likely feelings: excitement, daunted, confused. Also: of starting something special, away from the norm.
Discover. More understanding the problem, now with them taking more responsibility. Likely feelings: excited, frustrated, confusion.
Define. Identifying the opportunities, and who they might pursue them with. Likely feelings: excited, tired, fear of missing out.
Develop. The newly-formed consortia start working together. Likely feelings: excited, wary, tired, fear of messing up.
Pitch. Each group pitches, and gets first feedback. Likely feelings: nerves, frustration, excitement, tired, relief. Also: ending of something special, back to the norm, but taking something new with us.
I've put in a few exercises which I'm very familiar with, including Open Space Technology for the Discover afternoon (pushes responsibility to them, and the group can find out what it needs to talk about).
I had been wondering how to get people to explore the challenge of Net Zero heat without just people, in effect, shouting their vested-interest hypotheses at each other. The answer came from this future change workshop by Mushon Zer-Aviv and Maya Van Leemput. It gives a very interesting way of getting a large group to explore what can be done together, by combining three different exercises. In my iteration:
100 True Things -- everyone shares what they think is currently true about rapidly decarbonising non-industrial heat. From Jane McGonigal of Institute for the Future (IFTF).
Estuarine Mapping -- put the most important ones on a grid of effort needed vs time it will take. Top right (lots of effort and time) is a rigid zone. Bottomleft (little effort or time) is a volatile zone. In between is interesting. From Dave Snoden of Cynefin (more here).
Flip The Present -- small groups pick off one each; what would need to happen for this current fact to no longer be true?
The first two help understand the different views, and the different things available for realistic change. The last goes upstream on what could drive that change.
The point will not be to reach a consensus. But to generate many posibilites, from which people can select the one or two they wish to drive further.
There's lots more detail in the wireframe.
WHAT NEXT. Another round of feedback, and then I'll be writing the in-depth facilitators' agenda (which will run to many, many pages) before a rehearsal of some key moments with the facilitator team.
Mentoring a climate start-up
Step: 2/DISCOVERING. Themes: Climate. For-profit start up entrepreneurs. Early stage practices.
For the first half of the year I was mentoring a start up from The Greenhouse, the incubator within Undaunted, a collaboration between Imperial College and The Royal Institute.
Undaunted was previously known as the Imperial College Centre for Climate Change Innovation. You can hear about its work in this interview with Alyssa Gilbert (the current director) and Naveed Chaudry, who used to run the Greenhouse.
It was at their end-of-year drinks in December 2022 where, prompted by all these start-up entrepreneurs saying what they were building, I asked myself: 'what do I want to build?'. 'An Atelier of What's Next' came the answer.
The Greenhouse takes start ups with very early stage ideas and helps them develop. They take 2 cohorts a year, for up to a year. The first six months, or 'Germination' phase is about customer discover. The second six months (or 'Propagation' phase) focusses on more specialist skills for scaling. In that second six months they can choose to have a mentor.
Back in Feb I spoke to 4 or 5 different start ups who were exploring mentors and thought I might be the one for them. Most wanted very specific advice, on an industry, or on capital raising, or on marketing. I wouldn't really help those. The one who selected me needed more of an executive coach, because they were a rare example of a solo founder.
I'm going to keep the identity of the founder and their start up confidential, just because the lessons I want to draw out are not specific to that company, or sector. (As Aslan would say, I am not the one to tell their story.)
We've had 5 months of meeting twice a month, at least once in person. A couple of insights, which are as much for me-as-Founder as for anyone else.
Being a solo founder is cognitively taxing. You are constantly reprioritising, and there is no one else who is doing a daily check in or make you accountable for hitting that soft deadline.
ABCD: Always Be Celling [or 'selling'] the Dream. (Sorry.) This company was pre-revenue and pre-prototype. An idea on a piece of paper, with a proposition based on the experiences and insights of the founder. In every meeting (including with me) they had to be selling the dream of what could be done. That was the only way more funding could come in, more technical expertise could come in, more customers could be attracted. And this had to be done even though we all know most start ups fail (which is rarely a reflection on their founders).
Innovation funding: navigating the complex iron cage of bureaucracy. One of the main events in these for my mentee was applying for a grant from Innovate UK. (I am working with a different part of Innovate UK on Net Zero Heat -- see below.) My view was: even if it is a long shot, if it means you have to generate collateral that you need anyway, then it is useful. In the end, they fell just short in some parts of the scoring, in ways that look obvious in hindsight but were actually not clear in advance.
Which goes to show how complex it is. In Innovate UK's understandable desire to be fair, they've created a rigid, scored application process (or Weber's iron cage of bureaucacy). Navigating that is hard, especially if youv'e not done it before. And that's even if you can find a relevant funding pot. Hence the need for 'nodes' in the ecosystem, like Undaunted.
Creating the relationships you need, in the right order, and maintaining over time. My mentee needs to turn their concept into a testable digital model into a commercial-scale demonstrator. They, rightly, were spending a lot of their time assembling their own ecosystem: academics to feed in specialist knowledge; design engineers, for building a testable 'digital twin'; headhunters, to have a pipeline of staff for when the money does come in; and so on. But not customers, yet. They would just be confused and sceptical.
The glamour disguises the graft. There is a strand of rhetoric about start up entrepreneurs which focusses on the glamour. These modern heroes are how economies are dynamic, are how we redirect our society. They deserve their rewards because they are the true leaders. Etc, etc.
I'm rather more sceptical. I think we find it easier to tell the simple story of one person whose business succeeds, rather than the tangled narratives of many players in an ecosystem which was responding to structural, deep change. Also, the Lone Hero version is an excuse of getting all the reward, even though many players have usually taken risks (starting with the public funding of the discovery-led science and getting to a commercial demonstrator).
Even so, I realise there is another function of the simple story: motivating the entrepreneur through all the hard graft that they undoubtably have to do. Almost certainly, they could get a salaried job, with a more certainty on monthly wages. Folks have many motivations, but seeing their struggle as an heroic contribution is one.
WHAT NEXT. They asked me to keep on mentoring them, at least for the next few months (there are a few big moments coming up). I'm happy to.
ReadingNotes
Step: 6/DELIVERING. Theme: Transforming Systems; Atelier Practices.
In WeekNotes w/c 17 July here I said I would be doing at least one ReadingNotes in a working week. The purpose of the ReadingNotes is to increase the quantity of what I read, and the quality of insight I get from that (if others find them useful, how fantastic). I gave myself a target of doing one every working week, with a stage gate at the end of Sep.
I gave myself the week off for w/c 24 July (in an event all week). But week just gone, I did manage to write up one, the RSA classic 'From Design Thinking to Systems Change' -- see here.
WHAT NEXT. At least one ReadingNote for the first week I am back at work (w/c 28 Aug), and a stage gate (am I getting the value I want from this activity?) at the end of Sep.