Impact innovation accelerator

Demographic of the proposal

Our proposal is aimed primarily at the developers of distributed apps on the Cardano ecosystem.

Main Deliverables

For impact-focused entrepreneurs – The end users of the programme

An 8 session, online impact accelerator for developers helping them to:

• Define and outline their own personal purpose and then develop a pathway that aligns their own purpose with that of their business, the Cardano project, their 'tribe' and Gaia.

• Discover what their own brilliance is and how that can be leveraged to serve both themselves and their stakeholders.

• Map out a vision for using their stake pool operations, expertise, and passion to enable a business that can survive and grow to support their purpose and the whole Cardano Ecosystem.

• Put in place a robust top-level plan for achieving that vision.

For the Cardano Catalyst Project Community

A Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of an impact focussed innovation accelerator programme that can be used to embed good business practice into the developer community.

A research report on the developer business audit outcomes, purpose spectrum, purpose enablement, level of business capability, vision setting and business planning requirements of the participants.

The MVP programme will be a precursor to building a 'generational' Cardano developer impact innovation programme with integrated Alumni participation and direction.

The MVP can be evolved to be appropriate for all sizes and geographies of developers.

Preface

Words are powerful. They are used to describe and decide what is valid and invalid, included and excluded, worthy and worthless. They set the frame of power – and the narrative, used to decide what is nurtured and what is left to wither and die.

Lenses of Worth

In our western biased, capitalist focussed world this matters. In an enterprise, the value of people and all they build is reduced to, or valued, by 'being'; tangible assets i.e. things that you can value with currency such as land and machinery and wealth. And things you cannot, such as culture, community, leadership and wellbeing; which are created by people and their brilliance, and which are called In-tangible assets i.e. not measurable by currency.

So what?

Accountants and other professionals who claim to be able to measure the value of enterprises state that more than 80% of the value of a business is now intangible, i.e. not measurable by their metric of currency. Simply put, the majority of the 'people value', their 'brilliance' and efforts and the assets they create are not accounted for by our present capital-based system. In the current system they are not effectively measured, managed or valued: they are in-tangible i.e. not valid or worth anything.

Short-termism

This issue is compounded by the focus of the capitalist system on profit alone as a metric of success, which leads to a focus on short term individual monetary gains versus long term collective asset and value building.

In the old model, most accelerators still seem to have a very 'VC' approach, where 'venture' means 'adventure': so if we go on to complete an adventure – a competition, such as mapping a genome - if I win: you lose; and 'capitalist' where if I invest my capital, I take risk – I will put my capital in a spread portfolio so that the winning venture pays me handsomely (perhaps obscenely) for my investment, and so therefore I don't care about the losing ventures and the resources that have been wasted. And once I have vested my share, I don't care about it or its effect on the community.

A 'Wicked' Problem

Put together, this focus on value being defined by short term income measured gains; people and cultural intangible assets being invalidated; and the corrosive framework of the purely capitalist model limits opportunities for most of the population and is harming the planet.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

Changing the Narrative

Full Value Asset valuation

We can use a tool that looks at the contribution of an entity – such as a person, family, company, collective, community or ecosystem – and the value it adds in terms of its cultural and commercial input; measuring its contribution to wellbeing as well as wealth from the viewpoint of building income AND assets.

Building a 4-P based journey

Using our audit tool as a compass, we can build a journey for a business owner based upon purpose: focusing on people, performance, planet and profit.

As a result, we move from venture capitalism to collective responsibility.

Our perspective

For us it has always been a community journey, from pre-product expertise and evaluation; through launch and growth; to a small, mid-tier or larger organisation as appropriate: with criteria that include cultural and commercial value at an individual, team, organisation, community and Gaia level.

We have run our specialised version of this model - of impact growth for social businesses – for many years now and we know that to be successful requires a blended, collaborative approach; not just a binary choice of 'Tech Dev' or 'Bus Dev' based on the entrepreneur as the focus alone, but 'Tech Dev', 'People Dev', 'Purpose Dev', 'Ops Dev', 'Bus Dev', 'Community Dev', and 'Gaia Dev' woven into a true scalable support network that manifests itself in decentralised operations.

Impact

We have a full value impact-focused audit tool that can be deployed with Cardano members.

We have a 'generational' accelerator where the alumni become part of the next-generation of programme delivers.

We have a support system for the impact-focused participants in the accelerator from incubation, through acceleration to maturity.

All of the above exists and needs adaption to the specific needs of the Cardano Ecosystem.

We are excited about working with and supporting other accelerators in the Cardano Ecosystem.

Feasibility

What will the accelerator look like?

We envisage an initial cohort of 10 individual small impact-focused businesses working in the Cardano Ecosystem that will be invited by application to participate in the initial programme.

Following an introduction phase, the cohort will go through an 12-session programme giving them:

• Clarity on their purpose, impact and value add,

• An audit of where they are now, where they would like to be and how to get there, which produces,

• A practical top level impact driven business plan

• Scenario planning

• Handover to implementation

What does support look like

Our programme consists of an online self-assessment Full Value Business Audit that is then discussed with a coach. A coach is assigned to each participant in the programme to help them to grow and maintain their independence.

Where specific skillsets or experience are required to deliver the agreed growth programme, these will be introduced from our business guru network.

Support will be delivered by a team of coaches and mentors with deep sector experience.

The team each have a demonstrable track record of guiding impact focused entrepreneurs to the achievement of their purpose-led goals.

Product

We have a robust impact-focused accelerator framework for establishing, measuring, tracking and improving the functions and relationships within companies, that has been specifically designed to establish the purpose of founder/s and to ensure that this purpose is delivered on.

We use this framework as the foundation of the conversations that we have with our clients as we mentor them through their business growth journey.

It is based on the premise that companies operate at both strategic and tactical levels, and on operational/commercial and cultural levels. And it is in the cultural part of the business where 80% of its value sits – yet this has been difficult to measure and track.

Our programme takes an entrepreneur through a self-assessed audit of their company against our framework

The results and findings are discussed during a series of coaching sessions, and a development plan for the company is developed and agreed.

A coach then works with the entrepreneur through the growth process.

Our programme consists of an online self-assessment that is then discussed with a coach. A coach is assigned to each participant in the programme to help them to grow and maintain their independence.

Where specific skillsets or experience are required to deliver the agreed growth programme, these will be introduced from our business guru network.

Skills required

The following skills are required to deliver our proposal.

• Capability to organise and run an accelerator programme

• A platform to run an online programme

• An ability to attract appropriate people to the programme

• A method of measuring the success of the programme

• The ability to mentor, coach, consult and train participants in the programme

• The ability to adapt our existing programme into a small business focused MVP programme

• The ability to construct and deliver a research report on the MVP programme

• The ability to engage with the Catalyst community to launch and leverage the programme

We have many of these skills within our current team and will welcome the contribution of others to further expand our collective capability.

How will you adapt your existing programme?

Our programme was designed for purpose-led entrepreneurs and builds on cumulative decades of experience in senior technology, strategy and business roles in major organisations and in coaching and business impact focussed consultancies.

Our adaption approach will be to:

• Audit the internal alignment of participants to the principles of the Cardano project

• Build internal capability that improves that alignment

• Understand and map external market and business environment

• Define end goal

• Design plan for deployment

Getting on the road

After receiving the funding outlined in this proposal it will take 3 months to prepare the programme for full release to the Cardano entrepreneurial community.

By the end of the first month we will have adapted the existing programme for the Cardano community and tested the adaptations with a small test cohort of entrepreneurs.

By the end of the third month we shall have delivered a pilot programme to the test cohort.

And by the end of six months the programme will be commercially available globally.

Core team

From Edify Business Ecosystem

Harry Hellyer

Alan Casey

Jon Arnett

Mark Constable

Jude Ugwuegbulam

Suzi West

Advisory Team

Paul Farmiloe – former client, business and blockchain experience, trainee stonemason, VP formerly responsible for BT's blockchain development programme.

Dr Julie King – client, educationalist, Head of Centre for Academic English, Imperial College London.

Budget Allocation

Reframing and scoping an existing business impact audit tool as a dApp $15000

Curriculum reshaping and programme development $7000

Team Delivery Fees $10000

Platform Costs $1000

Marketing $1000

Report consolidation and delivery $1000

Auditability

Success indicators

We will track the number of projects that are engaged by our system, their increase in value, and their achievement of purpose.

We will track the number of mentors that we engage to work with Cardano entrepreneurs.

We will show how we can culturally adapt our programmes to the audience in each region of the world that we deliver them, and measure the impact of those programmes.

We will track the value created by programmes and show the forensic connection between our programme and this metric.

Successful completion of accelerator by small businesses members

• Successful business audits completed

• Successful vision and business plans completed

• Number of business, product ideas per member

Key Metrics:

• End of programme review audit

• References from three-month review

• Engagement of alumni on next programme

• Portability of programme

• Scalability of programme role out

Challenges

We envisage the following challenges:

• The mapping of language and terminology to that of the Cardano community.

The way that we describe the factors and processes in a business must be in a form that is recognizable and contextual to small developer business owners.

We will achieve this by engaging the test cohort in tuning the language of the programme and measuring its effectiveness.

Risks

We envisage the following risks:

• The biggest risk is not engaging with sufficient business owners to give us insight into the needs of the community.

We will mitigate this risk by using word of mouth techniques to speak to the Cardano community and encourage them to participate as a member of the test cohort.

References

Harry Hellyer

NED, and chairman, executive and business coach specialising in full value-based impact innovation programmes for enterprises and organisations.

Founding partner of 50th Generation – one of the UK's first Social Business Generational Accelerators – 2014-2018

Credited for supporting the development of the NHS's first Sustainable Development Vision and Strategy programme.

Coached Fellows on the Cambridge University, Programme for Sustainable Development,

Coached Fellows and Lectured for the Cambridge University, Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning - Social Enterprise

VP and director of strategy, marketing strategy and business development for several global IT, media and telecoms companies.

Alan Casey

Manager of a sovereign national grid control centre during a period of technological and cultural change.

Founder and consultant in an organisational effectiveness measurement system deployed into a global advertising and marketing communications network.

Founder of a conversational AI company creating systems that evaluate and improve competence in key organisational skills.

Member of the Edify Community.

Fellow of the RSA.

Edify Business Ecosystem

The Edify Business Ecosystem (Edify) is an impact innovation investment-focused consultancy and coaching practice. We operate mainly in 'dark mode' as we grow and engage with clients on the basis of word-of-mouth referrals.

Edify focuses on the identification, measurement, growth and valuation of both tangible and intangible assets of an organisation, and the alignment of those assets to the impact of the organisation.

Our methodologies encompass both the Value Reporting Foundation Integrated Reporting Framework and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board Framework.

Using our scalable methodologies we work with impact-focused small and medium commercial businesses to grow them into the 'next band' of scale – from £70k to £700k, from £700k to £7m and from £7m to £70m and exit.

Coached senior leadership team members for HSBC and other banking investment groups.

Coached Fellows at Imperial College London.

We will be happy to discuss specific examples of our impact on our clients on request.

Roadmap

Pre programme

Candidate selection and Onboarding

Programme

12 sessions covering

Module 1 Audit of business / proposition

Module 2 Overview of current operational Vision

Module 3 Purpose / Impact development

Module 4 Full value and Strategic vision and Impact

Module 5 Leadership and Management

Module 6 Business Plan Development

Module 6 Scenario planning

Module 7 Implementation of plan

Post Programme

hand over and next steps

Links to reference sites follow

https://www.50thgeneration.org/

https://www.edifybusiness.co.uk/courses