How an Impact Identity can catalyse multi-organisational collaboration

We’ve developed a considerable amount of knowledge by working with a wide range of organisations at the nexus of academic research, entrepreneurialism and investment for collaborative ventures.

One of the insights we’ve discovered might sound prosaic but we can promise you, its importance shouldn’t be underestimated. The impact can slow down progress, cause unnecessary friction and, on occasion lead to complete paralysis.

Any collaborative project with participants drawn from different departments or organisations has the potential for everyone to believe they are all talking about the same thing.

In reality, they’re probably not.

Each is likely to be taking away something quite different possibly due to individual agendas, interests or objectives.

These need to be resolved early.

Our solution to this problem is to form a small but representative team from the various partners and swiftly create articulations of the ‘thing’ as early in the process as possible. These articulations (and potentially, accompanying visuals) will be imperfect to start with, but they can short-cut a lot of pain.

It works because it shifts often complex scenarios from a purely intellectual exercise into one that has a more emotive dimension. And that gets forgotten in the rush for neat logic. By this I don’t mean jumping to the definitive creative solution before resolving the strategic one, that doesn’t work either. But collaborating on an objective purpose, mission and vision fast and then getting articulations down on paper equally fast can provide the catalyst to for meaningful and creative discussion about what the ‘thing’ actually is, as opposed to what X number of people, departments or organisation think it is. Think of it as ‘imploding’ rather than ‘exploding’.

Quantum Frontier is a perfect example of this. A wide variety of academics, entrepreneurs, university departments, corporates and authorities each with their ‘day jobs’ have come together ‘to bring cutting edge technology out of the lab and into the world’.

We brought key players together into one core team to co-create, inform and guide the strategic and creative progress. This effectively united the various elements behind a single journey – not ten competing ones, fast. And guided by an objective purpose, mission and vision this team reviewed naming, propositions, articulations and creative executions throughout, working at speed in those early stages. Maintaining momentum, enthusiasm and vision.

So in short – don’t allow pontification to be the enemy of progress. the tendency to delve into details and miss the big story determines whether a brand is actually launched/redefined or not. Get to your overarching story (often referred to as the Brand Idea) and the overall identity as early as possible so you have something to objectively ‘look at’.

It may not be functionally perfect at this stage, but identities are built over time.