“Ideally, this becomes available to everyone in the world … [not just] a student in a business school, [but] someone who has to get funding to get internet in an internet cafe….” – Dr. Evelina Van Mensel Day in and day out, organizations around the world struggle to get their employees to collaborate effectively with each other and with key partners. What does effective collaboration look like? Similar people climbing mountains or stairs, or perhaps rowing in formation? Not so, says Dr. Evelina Van Mensel. “The real magic happens when we stop seeing each other as just teammates.” Especially where the goal is innovation and change, the action lies in collaborating with people different from you. Evelina and her colleagues from around the world put this into practice with innovators from 20+ countries. She says: “We discovered an incredibly powerful and counterintuitive method for enabling diverse teams to solve problems together.” The upcoming book One Size Fits None: Time for an Entrepreneurial Revolution tells this story. Evelina continues, “I want to share this with the rest of the world, thus making it possible for others to apply it to their organizations and communities. This book is a crucial part in the process.” To learn more about the book and how you can get involved in its project, click here.
The Shift We Don’t See
An important case study studies in the book focuses on Martin Nedev and the award-winning green fertilizer venture he co-founded, Enthela. To succeed, says Nedev in the podcast, requires enabling business people to learn to work with scientists – people who learned to think and communicate differently from them.He says he learned crucial skills for doing this through the innovation program Evelina helps lead. In that program, cohorts drew on a range of participating programs. Participants included executive MBAs, college humanities students, and entrepreneurs in marginalized communities.
The case study on Martin’s company in One Size Fits None draws from an episode of What if Instead? in which we got to “sit down” with Martin and his former professor. The two focus on something surprising – not just soil biology, but the pivotal role, for innovators, of learning to collaborate across disciplines and backgrounds – professional, national, and otherwise. For Martin, they key is to move away from traditional authority and the incentives that go with it, and instead create an environment where people thrive. The key? Not just working together, but playing together. When this happens, in his experience, people don’t just contribute—they innovate. Innovation and collaboration require support, in the form of talented people, needed resources, and methods that work. Martin stresses that the world needs innovation to solve its biggest problems, but many promising ideas struggle to secure funding—especially in places where traditional investors favor quick returns over long-term impact. Evelina emphasizes that without support, even the best ideas struggle to see the light of day. “We can never underestimate the power of networks and how disadvantaged are those who don’t have one.” In the book, we tell the stories about innovators like Martin and present new research showing that innovators are neither born nor taught. You cultivate a mindset like Martin’s in one way: by taking part in experiments. This is all the more important if, like him, you’re doing this beyond conventional innovation hotspots.
Listen to the full episode for more.
One Size Fits None: Time for an Entrepreneurial Revolution was co-written by Mim Plavin-Masterman and our CEO, Alejandro Juárez Crawford. Pre-orders are now available from Bookshop.org and Amazon. For signed copies, to participate in NYC and Boston launch events – or to organize one for your own organization or community, please click here.
