It was love at first sight: IBM CSC experts meet IHB entrepreneurs

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Impact Hub Belgrade

Good news trigger a chain reaction that powers virtuous circles! It is logical sequencing, energy, positive reinforcement, good planning – a little of everything. This is why it was all so exciting from the very beginning when we learned that we were selected to participate in the IBM Corporate Service Corps program!

All along, we had been working on the development of an assessment methodology and system for our acceleration program called “Venture Growth”. While we were clear on the phases and curriculum of acceleration from the product development to business growth & scaling, we needed support in elaborating measurable indicators for the screening, assessment and tracking of progress made by the entrepreneurs and businesses involved. What made things a little more complex is that we wanted a lean process that would not be heavy on complicated algorithms, which is exactly what we presented as our challenge to our dream-team of IBMers from Asia and the US.

What we ended-up with was much more than the fulfillment of agreed deliverables. Indeed, we were all in awe at the work of our IBM experts who had been patiently and consistently structuring a framework with codified combinations of indicators based on criteria, parameters, phases and KPI dimensions. Most of all, we see Concepcion Sanin, Regina Corry, Avinashilingam Gopalsamy and Partha Paul as both personal and professional coaches. As our colleague Nenad would say, they helped us in many ways to better understand the essence of what we were doing with our Venture Growth at the Impact Hub Belgrade and to be able to explain it to others.

It is true that we had our “prejudices” at first! We warned our mentors about the fact that the Impact Hub is a community of entrepreneurs who follow their casual lifestyles and behave at work just like in their private lives. We definitely expected our IBMers to be more formal in their behavior and in their dress styles, and we thought it would be a challenge for them to adjust. However, the team was amazingly curious, positive about their new surroundings and completely happy to “learn” from us as well! They were excited to discover talents that we work with and be part of the adrenaline rush that is typical of the product and business development. It is an empowering experience when you know you are validating and growing solutions by turning challenges into opportunities.

I guess some of the “secrets” of this amazing journey include the approach and methodology of work employed by our IBM mentors. The entire project has been about co-creation through timely interactions that were agreed upon in advance. The outcomes of our conversations were amazing because of the analytical skills and structure with which our IBM mentors translated our know-how into workable and codified template, and, of course, also because of the curiosity and openness of IBM experts, who took this experience as an opportunity to grow personally as well.

In short, together with IBM CSC team we created a process for managing the selection, including screening and assessment, of impact enterprises for acceleration at Impact Hub Launchpad – accelerating venture growth. Along with the management process, we designed qualitative indicators to assess the stages of the ventures as well as their priorities, i.e. product and/or model validation and scaling, and their impact. The deliverables provided us with a standard framework for IHB to manage the entrepreneurial lifecycle in a sustainable, repeatable and effective manner and consistently capture the entrepreneur information. Our team is already applying this model in the Launchpad pre-acceleration program, where 35 entrepreneurs are currently accelerating their businesses.

Mutual relationships produce amazing benefits for all of the parties involved, and IBM mentors, through their CSC service, helped us immensely to accelerate our process in the launch of acceleration for impact entrepreneurs that takes into consideration soft, hard and impact indicators at different stages of achievement.

IBM CSC in Serbia – 2016
During one month spent at 2016 IBM’s Corporate Service Corps pro bono consulting program, eleven IBM employees from five countries, USA, India, Philippines, Argentina and Singapore, worked with three non-governmental organizations in Belgrade to help them attract foreign investment, foster IT community development, develop strategies and improve the business environment.

IBM Corporate Services Corps
The Corporate Service Corps was launched in 2008 to help communities around the world solve critical problems while providing IBM employees with unique leadership development opportunities. By sending groups of 10 to 15 individuals from different countries for community-based assignments in emerging markets, the program has so far helped over 140,000 people. Find more here.