Atelier WeekNotes w/c 9 Oct 2023
Zinc: 'Missions as Magnets'. Towards an invitation and offering.
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 delay from last week. A combination of a cold and too much quality rugby to watch. This WeekNote covers:
Zinc: 'Missions as Magnets'
Towards an invitation and offering.
Zinc: 'Missions as Magnets'
Step. 0/DETECTING - 2/DISCOVERING. Themes. Transforming systems. Innovation. Entrepreneurs.
On Thursday, I went to two events by Zinc, the mission-orientated venture builder. The first was on their latest mission, Eliminating Environment Threats to our Health. The second on 'Missions as Magnets', looking over the reasons for their success so far.
I was there as a Zinc Fellow, an expert who supports Founders and their newly created ventures by offering expertise. I was also there to learn more about trying innovation for sustainability.
Zinc = venture building + mission-orientation
Zinc says it "exists to build and scale a brand-new way to solve the world's most important societal problems". My way of understanding it is that they combine two methods:
1.Venture builder. A "business that builds businesses" by creating highly-skilled project teams and supporting them as they launch a new product. Here's one list of the top 50 in Europe. The Venture Builder tends to pay (so the would-be founders can be single-minded) and also invest if they think the business has legs. From memory, Zinc was part-inspired by Entrepreneurs First.
I associate Venture Builders with a Silicon Valley-like approach to founding new businesses for fast, high rewards. So, very digital tech-based, which comes with it the prospect of quickly building Minimum Viable Product, and of scaling via some kind of network effect. By contrast, a business based on a new physical technology (aka 'deeptech') will take much longer, and more investment, to get to something testable, and then to have up take.
If you are an investor comfortable with risk, you can invest in a portfolio of 10 digital tech businesses, have 9 fail, and still make larger returns from that one success even before a deeptech business has got a commercial demonstrator.
2.Mission-orientated innovation. "Missions lay behind some of the biggest innovative leaps forward of the last century and can offer the transformative approach needed today" is the explanation on the website of the leading advocate of this approach, Prof Mariana Mazzucato.
Last century the US created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA, with Defense added), with the mission: "to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security by sponsoring revolutionary, high-payoff research bridging the gap between fundamental discoveries and their military use."
The Economist has called DARPA the agency "that shaped the modern world", with at least a partial credit in the creation of weather satellites, GPS, drones, stealth technology, voice interfaces, the personal computer and the internet.
The contrast is with curiosity-led science, which is often in the deep background of useful stuff (Marie Curie Rontgen didn't know what X-Rays might be used for when he first discovered them*) but doesn't automatically lead to discovers getting used. Another contrast is market-driven innovation, which is fine as long as all you need are things which will definitely make money now. (Narrator: long-term societal prosperity needs more and different innovations than those which make money now.)
In general, a mission acts as a signal that orientates and pushes coherence on a system. Especially if backed by a large and credible entity (like a well-run government), the existence of a well-funded mission is like a guiding star for investors, businesses, entrepreneurs, technologists and so on. 'Out of all the things we could put our time into, things which contribute to this mission could be funded now and be successful in the long-term.' A mission also helps coordination between different players: supplier X, manufacturer Y and customer Z can find each other, and invest in complimentary assets to fulfil each others' needs.
Plus, a mission can give work a high status, and attract highly skilled people into a domain that is otherwise not attractive enough. As one of the co-founders of Zinc said, missions help people make the 'irrational' decision to take bold, high-risk action.
For Mazzucato, missions shift the role of governments from only fixing market failures to actively shaping or creating markets. This is a rejection of the neoliberal view of the state, as something that should be small and get out of the way. That view assumes free markets are the natural and best set-up, and will solve most things (and step in only where there are big problems).
Mazucatto's version of mission-orientated public policy assumes that markets are always being constructed by participants, and there is a necessary and legitimate role for democratic governments in shaping priorities. Note that market shaping is not the same as 'picking winners' or 'planning' (the folk memory of the UK's industrial policy of the 1970s). Because missions act as a guiding star, you don't need to pick winners. You are picking a direction, and markets select the specific winning technologies or firms.
As you might be able to tell, I like the missions idea. It isn't perfect ( how do you set the right missions? what about the risk of corruption?). But there are few other ideas in play which give agency on the macro- and meso-(/sectoral)-economies. I suspect many governments and big players will use a variant as we try to generate 'industrial revolutions on a deadline' to address the climate crisis and more.
Insights from Zinc's approach
It was a very interesting day, and I have pages of notes. All rather hard to summarised (but that's the point of doing the WeekNotes). I've pulled the headlines below. The => questions in italics are implications for the Atelier.
Success from cultivating four forms of capital: talent; social; intellectual and financial. Zinc organised the afternoon in the same way it organises its operations.
=> What is the Atelier cultivating / organising in order to succeed? What is the 'flywheel' whereby success creates the conditions for more success?
Key for Founders: motivation and 'humble tenacity' in service of learning-by-doing. Founders need to be "willing to stay in the mess for the slow cooking". That takes time. A founder needs to be able to go back to their motivation, and to bounce up from set backs, hearing the wisdom in whatever happened.
=> What assumptions do I need to leave behind in order for the Atelier of What's Next to succeed?
Key for a start-up: the user, the user, the (limited) product, the user again. "If you're not talking to your users, then you're making false progress." Going out with a limited product means you can learn.
=> How am I engaging the user and testing my concepts through action, and ensuring the insights generated are integrated?
A founding team needs shared direction and complimentary skills. All the founders who spoke were co-founders. (I know from a different VC fund that they are deeply reluctant to fund a solo founder.) They told similar stories: of having different skills and zones of responsibility (though being siloed about that), while have a common passion for what they were trying to do.
=> What skills do I have, and so what are the complimentary skills I need in a co-founder?
Missions attract talent, networks and funding. That's the idea, and Zinc have seen this in practice.
=> How can I frame the Atelier as having a mission, to nurture a 'scenius' and more?
Interim reflections on the Zinc approach
I hugely admire the Zinc co-founders, team and those who join as Founders. They've taken a big risk to make a difference. At least some of the businesses have come out the other side and are making a difference. That's to be celebrated.
And, of course, there are limits (how can their not be?).
Incremental innovations that reinforce the status quo? As Rowan Conway of Transformation by Design keeps telling me (and said in public here): "problems are not markets". Zinc invests in founders who have for-profit businesses (and preferably ones with big financial potential). As with a Silicon Valley-like venture builder, there are only some problems that revenue markets which can attract that VC-like funding.
For instance, one start-up on the stage was helping low paid employees have a paying side gig. I don't doubt that a relatively small side gig can tip a person's income over a threshold which makes a big difference to their life. That could be scaled to thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. A real difference.
And yet, at a systemic level, doesn't that risk doing what many benefits do: making low-paid jobs viable, and, effectively, subsidising profitable companies? Could it be an innovation which, unintentionally, helps the struggling status quo stay in place for a little longer?
Ecosystem for accelerating mission-driven start-ups, or for solving the mission? Zinc is rightly proud of the ecosystem(s) it has nurtured to support its Founders go from beginning to early revenue and beyond.
And yet. And yet. These missions need more than a few successful businesses. They need a re-shaping of the socio-economic structures. One business can contribute to eliminating environmental threats to our health. But fully eliminating those threats will take more than businesses.
In Mazuccato's terms, does Zinc's approach fit much more with market-fixing than with market-shaping?
It got me thinking as to what else you would to deliver on a mission, as well as supporting start-ups that contribute to the goal. As ever, Rowan Conway is already ahead on this. All the way back in 2019 she co-developed the idea of an Impact Accelerator.
A bit like my conclusion with impact investing, I left the day thinking that Zinc was a brilliant and necessary part of what we need to do. But also limited in important ways.
WHAT NEXT
Draw on these insights with the Atelier of What's Next.
Be a good Zinc Fellow for this cohort of founders (and learn through that).
Towards an invitation and offering
Step: 4/DEVELOPING. Theme: Atelier management. Atelier process backbone.
My main activity this week has been writing a deck with the title: How can the Atelier of What’s Next be of service to you, and your purposes?
This is the document I want to use to engage others, as the 'learning-by-doing' way of answering the two questions to explore about the Atelier's future:
1.What pain points do possible funders (and other resource providers) have that Atelier of What's Next could address?
2.How could the Atelier be organised for abundance?
I've formulated it for two audiences, with a specific next step for each:
“I have a challenge or idea for a better tomorrow which is stuck.” ⇒ Come into the studio for us to work on it together.
“I love moving challenges and ideas forward for a better tomorrow.” ⇒ Be part of the studio, as we help great things to happen.
As ever, when pulling that kind of thing together, I've been realising lots of half-formed thoughts need to go forward a few steps before it can be finished. Put another way, it is late. I had hoped to share it in this WeekNotes. Next time.
As a taster, here's one diagram I've finished: the Atelier Process Backbone (which is my modified version of the Design Council's Double Diamond).
More next week. Which will be Friday or Saturday this week. Oh, you know what I mean.
WHAT NEXT
Finish the invitation. Start to engage people with it.
*CORRECTION
X-Rays were not discovered by Marie Curie but by Wilhelm Rontgen. Curie, still the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields, had an exceptional life, full of curiosity-driven research, which you can read here.