This is not going to be a very structured and well-rehearsed post. Infact, I am starting this blog to bring some order into my own confusion. If, along the way, I manage to convince some of my readers (hopefully, there will be some :-) ) this will be like a nice dessert for a good meal. But the main goal of this is to reflect and get some perspective about what is happening right now in my professional life. So why don't we start at the beginning?
I am one of the founders of a company called BrainStore. We are based in Switzerland and have been in business for 21 years. We are an Idea Factory, and we help companies come up with better innovation, build innovation teams and use processes and frameworks to make their innovation initiatives more successful.
We grew from 3 founders to more than 80 people and then downsized to roughly 25 over a period of two years because of the economic challenges we faced in the last 24 months. So far, we have been structured quite hierarchically with one of the founders being the CEO but also mainly leading all innovation, most of sales and most of operations. Though we knew that there are risks involved with this, we just never managed to organise ourselves in a diffferent way, mainly, probably, because we made the usual mistakes founders make when they cannot let go of their "baby".
This year, however, we realized that we need drastic change in order to prepare ourselves for a (hopefully) successful future. And we went looking for solutions. How should we re-organise so that the responsibility for the company, it's products, the interaction with clients and so on were in the hands of many instead of one or two decision makers?
I am documenting this process mainly for us, but also for others who are going through similar transitions and want to learn from us.
I am one of the founders of a company called BrainStore. We are based in Switzerland and have been in business for 21 years. We are an Idea Factory, and we help companies come up with better innovation, build innovation teams and use processes and frameworks to make their innovation initiatives more successful.
We grew from 3 founders to more than 80 people and then downsized to roughly 25 over a period of two years because of the economic challenges we faced in the last 24 months. So far, we have been structured quite hierarchically with one of the founders being the CEO but also mainly leading all innovation, most of sales and most of operations. Though we knew that there are risks involved with this, we just never managed to organise ourselves in a diffferent way, mainly, probably, because we made the usual mistakes founders make when they cannot let go of their "baby".
This year, however, we realized that we need drastic change in order to prepare ourselves for a (hopefully) successful future. And we went looking for solutions. How should we re-organise so that the responsibility for the company, it's products, the interaction with clients and so on were in the hands of many instead of one or two decision makers?
I am documenting this process mainly for us, but also for others who are going through similar transitions and want to learn from us.
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