ProjectsA new digital ecosystem for the biggest European community of innovators
A two years journey alongside Talent Garden, to improve their service experience for staff, co-workers and students, as well as better connect all community members.
What elements of the physical interaction, for example on campuses, may be strengthened through the use of technology? What role do digital tools have in supporting community building and networking?
Starting from an assessment of the current experience, we worked with the Talent Garden team to develop a vision for the evolution of their value proposition and shape a roadmap of interventions that could reinforce their positioning and offer by leveraging the potential of digital tools and experiences.
The initial research and strategy (3 months) shaped a pipeline (2+ years) of initiatives that helped improving both the front-end (new campus app, new features for space booking and access to common resources, new subscription offer to standardise mentoring and networking possibilities, etc.), as well as the back-end (new matching system for students and companies, revised school onboarding experience, etc.).
What happens when a service experience that is essentially campus-based enters an era of hybrid working and learning modes? How to ensure the core value is delivered to a broader audience, in new and diverse ways?
Talent Garden is the largest European network of innovators, that spans across 12 countries with 4500+ members, an innovation school and a corporate program. They engaged oblo and Fightbean towards the end of 2020, with the goal of improving their service experience and offer. Talent Garden was aware of the community value being one of their essential differentiators - but that it could be limited by new ways of working becoming more common.
Before Covid-19 the random serendipity of the space was key in creating connections and giving people access to coaches and mentors in the community. Later, with some courses shifting to virtual classes and people working partially from remote, it has become crucial to ensure the same level of service could be delivered in new hybrid ways, standardising community building and management practices, even at distance.
Together, we embarked in a transformative process to turn Talent Garden in a future-ready and delocalised service. We started from a detailed assessment of the service experience, involving key stakeholders throughout Europe (staff, students, co-working members) in a round of in-depth interviews and observations, aimed at understanding key needs and paint points, but also mapping reasons behind staying in Talent Garden, and emerging habits.
The high fragmentation of internal tools and processes emerged as major blocker - leading community managers to spend lot of time in operative tasks, instead of focusing on strategic aspects, such as facilitating connections and supporting the growth of individuals and businesses.
Insights from the immersion phase allowed to identify a direction for the new experience, shifting the position of Talent Garden from a space-provider to a business partner. The vision was expressed by the “TAG as a trainer” metaphor, that guided the ideation of a large variety of interventions aimed at improving essential services, as well as reinforcing the possibility to get inspired, learn and grow by being part of the TAG community.
Addressing the fragmentation in management and communication tools and processes was the first step to tackle in order to be able to deliver the new vision. We prioritised the development of a new mobile app to support the co-workers’ and students’ experience, as a way to make all community members more independent and relieve part of the pressure from the staff. The app also became a support infrastructure to integrate additional features and services later on, and increase the customer life-time value.
The new vision also required to overcome internal silos and offer divisions: from seeing every user as different based on the type of service they access, to developing a one-community model, able to support a life-long learning approach and encourage ecosystem dynamics.
The one-community model created during the project was particularly helpful to support a reflection on how to establish longer relationship with TAG customers and visitors (being either students, co-working members, companies, alumni, event organisers, guests etc.). For example, it helped ideating how to facilitate internal transitions from one role to another, better adapting to the evolving needs of every community member.
At the same time, the one-community model became an inspiration to experiment with the creation of a more flexible subscription-based offer, that could provide community members access to various services (such as coaching, events, news, startup stories, meeting rooms, etc.) even when not active co-working members or students. This leads towards lighter types of engagement, that could expand the value of the community itself as well as generate new revenue streams.
