Small SPO Impact Business Programme

Demographic of the proposal

Our proposal is aimed primarily at single-person impact-focused SPOs.

Main Deliverables

For Small SPO's – The end users of the programme

An 8 session, online impact incubator for small SPO's 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 incubator programme that can be used to embed good business practice into the SPO community.

A research report on the SPO 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' SPO impact innovation programme with integrated Alumni participation and direction.

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

Preface

SPOs are mission critical to the successful growth and operation of the Cardano project and if supported and leveraged effectively, will be the engine room of Cardano as a force for good on a global scale.

The SPO network forms a 'complex adaptive system' that sits in a business and technical environment that is volatile, uncertain, complicated, and ambiguous (VUCA).

Understanding how SPOs can thrive in this environment is a key to the longer-term success of the Cardano Project. Both they and the SPOs need to be clear on:

• How they are adding value to the ecosystem at all levels, and

• What it takes, and they need, to be successful in terms of commercial and purpose goals

However, if left unchecked the SPO market will evolve towards the 'survival of the fittest' for the allocation of resources resulting in aggregation of SPOs, centralisation and monopolistic behaviours.

This can be countered by communities of interest amongst the SPOs. But while there are proposals that deliver the technical aspects of a cooperative community, there is also a need for the cultural and commercial factors of a 'community of interest' to be understood and delivered.

While SPOs could be attracted to a community that is aligned to their own purpose, and a purpose beyond just profit, they may not have clarity of how that purpose is described and achieved.

As much as there is a need for the community to be clear on its purpose, SPOs will also need support to first articulate their purpose and to then effectively and demonstrably achieve it.

And that's because SPO's may have differing levels of business, operational, financial and leadership capability and experience. If left unsupported, its these unmet needs that could lead to a loss of potential talent and expertise in the SPO pool, and consequently centralisation of the network.

To be effective, the Cardano ecosystem needs to support the SPO community with the business, commercial and cultural knowledge necessary to grow and mature.

Impact

SPOs can be at the vanguard of an impact investing Cardano community as they are innovators in the ecosystem with both technical capability and an Impact innovation focus.

The Cardano SPO community is vibrant and still developing. If supported and leveraged effectively it can be the engine room of Cardano as a force for good on a global scale.

Independent SPOs are mission critical to the successful operation and growth of Cardano project in several Interrelated areas.

SPO Personal Purpose and Growth

SPOs can be highly purpose driven, however there is a wide spectrum of purpose and depth of commercial vision and cultural intent evidenced by current and potential SPO's.

This programme will give each participating SPO a clear idea of both their own purpose and how that fits within their stakeholder group – in terms of generating worth, as measured by cultural wellbeing and commercial wealth.

Operations of the Cardano network

Healthy SPO's are essential to the Cardano network, two of the main factors are:

Resilience – ensuring that the evolutionary pressures of survival of the fittest are resisted by a healthy community of business enabled, purpose-led SPOs, whether operating independently or as members of a pool. This is about the integrity of the diversity of the network pool and is anti-aggregation.

Trust – Other proposals in Catalyst rightly state the importance of evidence of impact, e.g. ensuring that SPOs honour their commitments. Purposeful SPOs need clarity on their purpose, and how its impact will be measured.

This programme is designed to give small SPO's the foundation tools and skills necessary to build business resilience into their operations, and a set of robust reporting tools that can be ported into any system wide cultural and commercial, impact reporting.

Growth of the Cardano network level ecosystem

The Cardano ecosystem needs to grow aligned to its impact principles, and in so doing will provide the platform for purpose-led dApp developers and communities.

Its scalability, while necessary, should not lead to aggregation and centralisation, and must improve its resilience.

Existing and prospective SPOs provide part of the compass and connection to all other areas of the network level ecosystem and the outside business environment. They must therefore be supported, both technically and commercially, to drive this resilient growth and, as a consequence, to be successful in their purpose and commercial objectives.

This programme embeds a set of 'full value' audit tools and a journey methodology and metrics, that will allow participant SPO's:

• To measure their success over time with both cultural and commercial metrics,

• That cover both income and capability generation, and

• Create cultural and commercial assets.

Growth and promotion of an SPO in the Cardano business ecosystem

Successful SPO's by their nature need to become adept at both dealing with technical solutions on the physical network and developing relationships with Delegators that will attract them to their stake pool. To do this they need to be able to explain (through education), the value of their enterprise – its purpose, value and impact and the business services that it could offer to its customers – such as delegators and others.

This programme explores the 'core value add' – identifying what the 'brilliance' of each participant SPO could be – and then outlines the market for that service and how best to market to them – this includes creating a 'pull' or attraction strategy for potential POS Delegators through word of mouth rather than deploying a 'push' marketing strategy to attract Delegators.

Adoption of ADA in the business network

Due to the way the Cardano POS network operates, SPO's hold a powerful set of potential relationships and strong sense of motivation, that can directly influence and support both themselves and the growth and leverage of the Cardano Project.

Expanding out the 'educator' role necessary to attract Delegators within the existing orbit of an individual SPO. The full range of the Cardano network SPO's potential relationships include:

• Current ADA delegators,

• Potential ADA stakers – existing ADA holders

• Potential ADA holders – existing crypto holders

• Potential Crypto Investors, both existing and new investors

This programme will support participating SPO's to frame up what their potential markets could be and give an overview of how to engage and educate them.

Feasibility

What will the programme look like?

We envisage an initial cohort of 10 individual small SPO's that will be invited by application to participate in the initial programme.

Following an introduction phase the cohort will go through an 8-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

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 SPO 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.

Product

We have an established 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 SPO 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 incubator 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 an SPO 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 SPO 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.

A roadmap plan is attached to our proposal.

Roadmap

A roadmap is attached to our proposal.

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

Curriculum reshaping and programme development $7000

Team Delivery Fees $10000

Platform Costs $1000

Marketing $1000

Report consolidation and delivery $1000

Auditability

Success indicators

Successful completion of incubator by Small SPO 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 SPO community.

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

Links to reference sites follow

https://www.50thgeneration.org/

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