This is a CTP of initiative: Impact Hub Amsterdam (Netherlands)
The first CTP took place when the Hub Amsterdam inhabited a physical space at the Westerstraat, in November 2008.
The inhabitation of the space at the Westerstraat was a crucial moment of materialization of the goals, practices and roles of the people who were involved in the initial community. It was a co-creative process with the people who were involved, but also with the specific characteristics of the building. According to co-founder 1, this transition from an ad-hoc community to a community with a location with real opening and closing hours, came with “materializing things, including actual things with the furniture, but also in the finances. It came with a strong formalization of roles in terms of who is actually responsible for what, because it came with a different level of engagement”. The shareholder describes a turning point from a group of people who were exploring a concept, towards setting up as a business and an organisation in a concrete building: “It was very major and critical from that perspective. They spent a good year on it, a good round of exploration and community building at the least”.
By finding a location for the community of social entrepreneurs, they were able “to connect with each other” and therefore could use each other’s expertise and services. Developing this community, which ultimately inhabited the space, was the result of a group of people “who believed in a different way of being, organizing and working” (co-founder 1). By obtaining a physical working space it became possible to welcome others who were triggered by, or interested in their services; or who wanted to join this community, which was aimed to challenge the traditional mode of business; namely to be “co-creative” in their practices and purpose driven in their enterprising. As co-founder 1 indicates “it was actually about social entrepreneurs meeting each other, working peer-to-peer. Helping each other in their enterprises, profiling each other or getting the opportunity to be profiled”. The shareholder describes: “Before the Westerstraat they were basically building a community of social innovators and entrepreneurs and had conversations with each other to see how, in a way this community of practice, how that community could be useful to each other as the first step before actually having a building to serve the community. So the first thing was the creation of the community”.
Before Impact Hub had located at the Westerstraat “our sessions took place in a variety of meeting spaces i.e. somebody’s apartment or in a rented space which was available for a couple of hours” (co-founder 1). Once they became a “community with a home”, this enabled them to host meetings that were more focused on content: “There was now a place for teachers, speakers, people who were offering their perspectives and expertise. There was an actual lift of working together. (...) You could have a permanent space to showcase what your ventures were, and we also had a hosting team on call to support” (co-founder 1).
The process of developing a ‘community with a home’ was constructed by various individuals who all played a different role in this process. As co-founder 1 describes it: “it was about creating a co-founding community”. It is possible to regard three individuals as the ‘co-founders’ of the community, two who started out and a third who joined soon after: “Essentially that’s how the leadership emerged; in that trinity to actually make things happen” (co-founder 1).
There were however also others involved in the ‘founding community’. These people “were around and were strong ambassadors who created the identity and were part of the conversations. They became hosts of the community and invited people in, explaining what it was all about” (co-founder 1). This group consisted of 12 to 15 volunteers who worked with the co-founders depending on their availability, and had a “very strong feeling of co-founding with us” (co-founder 1).
Besides the efforts of the co-founders, and the co-founding volunteers/hosts, there were three “angel investors” who were key in this CTP. According to co-founder 1, these three individuals were part of the community, and “were the ones who allowed us to actually sign the lease (for the space at the Westerstraat), or at least gave us the (financial) backing for it”.
An important insight from the perspective of the shareholder is that there was never a fear that some of the shareholders would back out. The shareholders were friends to the co-founders. As such, they would not unnecessarily call in their debts or cause trouble. “They were very sympathetic to the organization, had it been a loan from the bank or something, then it would have been a different story” (shareholder). They expected more than money as a return for their investment.
Even though many of the social enterprises that were the first ones to inhabit the space are not regarded as ‘co-founders’, they have played a significant role in the process of transitioning the ‘space-less community’ into a ‘community with a home’. They were the people who, accordingly to co-founder 1, “started the buzz, filled up the space, and made it so that we had memberships from our launch on 21.11.2008”.
Co-founder 1 describes the CTP as a result of a high level of synchronicity between different events and the efforts of involved individuals. In particular finding an appropriate location and finding investors for it: “In some sense we were looking for a space for a while and at one point this space showed up through our network. The investors stood up at the same time and wanted to make things happen. We did not know that they were people who had capital to invest: they made themselves known and really wanted to be part of this”.
It is interesting to note that during this whole process, the involvement of the municipality was minimal: “I had reached out and had several meetings, most didn’t understand the value of what we were doing to the city nor the contribution of social ventures to society. There were a couple early ‘fans’ but more out of their personal interest than the capacity to do anything for us in their jobs” (co-founder 1).
There have been several related events before and after Impact Hub located to the Westerstraat. Co-founder 1 explains: “There had been 1,5 years of different events. Some of those were focused on what an Impact Hub would actually be, and what we were actually co-creating”. Some of the meetings were aimed at finding a space for the community, but there were also other meetings. Even before finding a physical space, the community was connecting to the public in events on “how they wanted to impact the city”, and what “the aspirations for the city were” (co-founder 1). Finding the appropriate location in the end, can be regarded as a result of this co-creative way of working, which already was taking place before being a ‘community with a home’.
Soon after signing the lease there were the first shareholders meetings in September 2008, with the (6-7) shareholders and (+- 5) team members. The official shareholder-meetings would occur basically once a year. The shareholder emphasizes the importance of these formal meetings: “Those are the more critical moments at which the shareholders generally approve of what the team is proposing and we sometimes have questions. But the meetings themselves aren’t critical in terms of the development of the hub as a whole. I think what the team decides and the meetings that they have are the critical moments”. Besides these formal shareholders meetings, the shareholder indicates that there were more informal meetings, in which the shareholders were also invited to participate.
There was a launch party when the space was not fully decorated yet on 21st of November 2008 where “you could see it in its raw state” (shareholder). After they received the ownership of the location there was another opening event in which they invited people to experience the space.
After a while the community came to the conclusion that the location at the Westerstraat was not completely meeting their growth demands, including the collaboration with the other organisations that were present in the building. Co-founder 1 reports: “We were coming into a larger eco-system [the building] and realized that there was nobody there who knew how to do co-creation. (…) We realized that people spoke the language of creative interactive ecosystems, but did not necessarily have the practice of that”. Besides the absence of a real co-creative working modus, there were also limits to what you could do to the building: “We were not allowed to do things that we thought would be of value for the co-creation experience” (co-founder 1). This ultimately led to the conviction of the co-founders that they needed to find another place, which was more suitable for their desires and demands. This eventually led to a next CTP (see RELOCATION to the Westerpark).
The CTP involved several dilemmas, tensions and pressure – not all necessarily negative. Co-founder 1 explains: “there was a lot of stress, because there was a lease for 5 years, which had cost a lot of money and it was moving from being this beautiful idealistic project to seriously committing our lives to this”. As a result, those involved “went through some dilemmas on committing as individuals, but also as a collective”. This shared experience was especially apparent in the minds of the three co-founders since “they really dedicated themselves to each other and this project without knowing how long it would take or how long it would last, or when they could expect some revenues” (co-founder 1).
Besides these individual and shared dilemmas there were some deliberations going on regarding the lease and starting up the business. According to co-founder 1, these deliberations had a positive effect on the community: “It was always an open debate on the content of the deliberation, as well on how we could resolve issues”.
One challenge that was constantly recurring was the clash “between the social and the business”. Also the Impact Hub network more widely, this is a recurring challenge that could not always be overcome. Co-founder 1 tells us: “people always have different expectations of what comes first: a profitable business model or having impact. That comes down to the ‘nitty gritty’, and sometimes it comes down to whether you can pay somebody for their services or not”. This tension between ‘the social and the business’ became even more noticeable when the community had to interact with organizations or individuals outside of the network, which were not used to the idea of co-creation.
Another challenge occurred when the community entered their first location at the Westerstraat. As described by co-founder 1: “There was a struggle for us coming into a building which was very commercially oriented, while we were more impact oriented. (…) Although we had a vision for the building on how this could be a larger co-creative hub, we found out it wasn’t curated. We found out that most people had closed doors, and were actually more interested in protecting their own work, instead of being involved in a co-creative environment”.
Another significant contestation with the ‘outside world’ displays itself in the only interaction that the community at that time had with a politician, who had not been involved and done nothing to enable the Impact Hub, but at a certain point “came walking in and took all credits for the space” (co-founder 1). This led to the realisation that the Impact Hub should stress its independence.
Looking back on locating at the Westerstraat, and the transition from being an ‘ad hoc community’ to a ‘community with a physical home’, it was an organic process which included some elements of anticipation: “We first started with this idea in 2006, we kind of expected to transition from an idea into a physical space. We didn’t know exactly when and when the opportunity would come up. ” (co-founder 1). As such co-founder 1 refers to it as a “natural organic process”.
Before finding the Westerstraat, team sessions had become more and more focused on finding a suitable location. This was partly driven by experiences of using temporary spaces. As illustrated by co-founder 1: “There was a point in the community, after you are hosting it for a while in spaces that did not work out, and there was a bit of a fatigue in the community. (…) [It made us ask]: “‘are we just going to be a social network with emails which meets in ad hoc places?’”.
The process of eventually finding and settling in a place was explicitly experienced as a CTP at the time. Co-founder 1 is very clear about this: “There was a strong reality check in what we were stepping into. (…) We were very conscious of the consequences of the materialization of our ideas”.
Even though the materialization of the Hub was ‘anticipated’ in the sense that is was an expected event to occur, it was a natural process that was not strictly planned: “I think we had a lot of time anticipating but also very little time to anticipate the specific circumstances, because there was a series of serendipitous moves and the space was all of a sudden available. So in some sense you are very prepared and in some sense you just need to jump into motion” (co-founder 1).
This turning point comes with several insights that can be translated into learning experiences. According to co-founder 1 is it very important to acknowledge that “the best things around this critical turning point came out of serendipity, came out of really interesting conversations with people and trusting and taking a risk, and it is important to honour that. The best lesson is to make space for that”. A clear example in line with this serendipity is when the Impact Hub was in need of a graphic designer: “When we discussed this [need for a graphic designer] the doorbell rang, and someone walked in. We asked: what do you do? And she responded: I am a graphic designer. (…) These things would literally happen because there was the sense of putting your intention out to the universe”.
Another useful learning revolved around the funding to make it possible to sign the lease and the resistance that emerged itself around this. Co-founder 1, who is Canadian, recalls: “There was a lot of resistance, particularly to me. They said “you are a foreigner, you don’t speak the language fluently, you don’t even have the money””. The biggest lesson in general and particular in this situation has been that “you need to create a bubble around you”. This doesn’t mean closing off or being ignorant, but creating “a very conscious protection or space around what is important and to guard the values you stand for”.
These contestations and others that were described before have led to different insights on how to overcome them. First of all there was the deeply rooted conviction that a crucial factor in overcoming contestations was the presence of the community and the support they provided for the co-founders to take this process to the next level. As formulated by co-founder 1: “Because there is a community at our backs, with the same convictions and taking a stance. It wasn’t individuals against each other. It wasn’t about resisting or being against the stream. It was taking a step for something. And even though we were not sure what this new world or paradigm would look like, we know that it needs to be different”.
An additional insight that co-founder 1 learned was that “some things need to be experienced to be understandable”. Having a conversation with people who do not understand a co-creative mode of business cannot be based on pure logic: “To be able to let people try ‘the product’ you need to have it first, and it was very hard to give people a full taste before you actually exist”.
Another important learning that is stressed concerns the nonlinearity of the development of social enterprises like Impact Hub. As the shareholder indicates: “These things emerged because of what was going on, what was happening in non-linear dynamics at the moment. So it is hard to know next time if you would do it differently. You can’t take something that historically looks like a linear journey and go this is how you would set up a Hub. And what we have learned from this one is this and that and we can use this, because you don’t know how the next iteration or version is going to emerge”. In a way there are guiding principles that can help you in the process of emerging a hub, but there is no blueprint. In line with this, the shareholder emphasizes the importance of developing a community before considering taking it to the next level such as finding a space for the community. “The building is just the skin wrapped around the community, and it’s tempting to see the building just as a building and then to go and find one. But if you don’t have a community it is hard to really occupy the building”.
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