Why is CREATORS an NGO?
There is one particular question that we get asked about EVERY SINGLE TIME during meetings with potential partners or even some long-term colleagues: “Why are you a non-for-profit organization?” Specifically, we hear that “we could easily be a private company and make more profit” and that there are many companies out there that are trying to do what we do. In this blogpost, I will share why we chose to be an NGO and why we’ve continued being one five years into our existence.
CREATORS is not a privately-held company. We do not have investors that have provided us funding only to get a nice ROI (Return on Investment) sometime in the future. From day one, we were a non-for-profit organization and it has influenced our work plans and the partnerships we entered into. Also, I believe that to this day it is still relevant for us to be a non-profit. Let me explain why.
But before I do, I want to say this: I don’t think that other organizations that design and implement innovation activities need to be non-profit and I don’t think that our way of doing things is in any way superior to those who are operating innovation labs for profit. At the same time, I think that — for us — there are plenty of great things that happened specifically because we have not been driven by profit but rather by our mission.
1. We Have Been Purpose-driven
Our ultimate goal is impact: we always wanted to support the development of innovation as the driver for economic and social change in Israel and abroad. In terms of choosing the right projects for us, we looked for industries and activities that still need additional push in order to fulfill their potential.
For instance, we have never established an activity in cyber security in Israel because the ecosystem is already very developed with many successful startups, VCs, mature companies and developed mentorship network. On the other hand, we have believed for the last couple of years that the Insurtech sector has not reached its potential in the Israeli Startup Nation — this is why we have run the Insurtech & PensionTech Hackathon together with the Capital Markets, Insurance and Savings Authority and for the last eight months we have co-founded and led FINnovation — the official Israeli Fintech and Insurtech Community together with the Ministry of Economy and five regulatory authorities (incl. Israel Securities Authority and Bank of Israel).
We have had a similar approach in our projects around the world: We are currently running CityTech Ruhr — the startup competition in solving Germany’s Ruhr Metropolis specific challenges — a combination of the GovTech (government technology) and Smart City project that incentivizes startups from around the world to address important city-related challenges: an area of innovation that is still underdeveloped around the world and can bring significant impact to local and central governments globally.
That means that we have not taken all the projects that came our way — we picked those that were aligned with our mission and had the potential to impact global innovation capacity.
2. We Have Exported Israeli Innovation Know-How
We have always strived to support the local innovative capacity of Israeli companies and innovators and “export” this know-how into the world, supporting Israel not only as a “Startup Nation”, but also more broadly as an “Innovation Nation”.
Israel has a unique situation: It’s a close-knit innovation ecosystem with many players from around the world (with close to 400 R&D centers of various multinational corporations) and great local talent and innovation culture (over 6,000 startups — the highest number per capita in the world). We learn from one another every day and get to interact with various types of organizations all in one, small country. This is an extraordinary sandbox for testing, learning, iterating and sharing.
And this is exactly what is happening in Israel. I do not say that Israel is more innovative than other places — it would not be true. I want to say that Israel is uniquely positioned to experience various innovation practices very intensely. By being a part of this place and learning so much from others, we’ve believed that our mission could not be complete without making sure that we “export” these learnings through our international project work and teaching others what we have learnt.
This is why we have always shared knowledge with our partners, so that — once they are ready — they would be able to conduct innovation programs without us. United Nations Development Program (UNDP), for instance, hired us last year to create capacity and ecosystem building project in Macedonia, where we worked with talented entrepreneurs and ecosystem leaders on creating great startups. If we were a for-profit organization, we would not be able to be so open about the tools to do it yourself.
3. We Have Loved Sharing Methodologies and Reports Online
By developing and publishing our lessons learned and ideas about innovation — in the blog and in form of comprehensive reports — we’ve reached various audiences that can learn about innovation and digital transformation free of charge.
This is why we’ve published best practices, use cases and research in the fields of innovation ecosystem building, corporate innovation, public-private innovation projects, GovTech and Smart City know-how and ways to build innovative capacity of people and organizations around the world.
Through these tools, we want to reach anyone interested in learning about innovation and startups without barriers. These tools are open to everyone and can be relevant for various communities. Sometimes, these communities get in touch with us and want to learn more — we are always happy to do that. This is yet another reason why being an NGO makes it possible to not only focus on our sustainability, but also on being helpful to others.
4. We Have Supported Startups Pro Bono
We’ve supported founders and startups as much as we can and of course always pro bono. We have never accepted any money from early-stage companies.
Whenever there have been projects that involved startup mapping and sourcing, supporting specific startup topics or creating opportunities for startups to grow, we’ve opened it broadly to all potential startups and try to help them out. Even if they did not get a specific contract, we still thought about the ways to help them in other ways or at least give them feedback and advice.
This takes time — only last month, one of my colleagues spent over 60 working hours discussing needs with Israeli Fintech and Insurtech startups. However, for us, it was always worthwhile taking this time.
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On top of that, each team member has been encouraged to develop their own goals that were related to these wider concepts. For instance, I love empowering women to invest in their professional development — something I’ve been lucky to continue doing while at CREATORS. This is why I always take time to meet female professionals for coffee and share my experience and advice.
Another example is our Master Builders side project developed by my colleague Inbal Elazar. It is a learning and exchange tool for experienced innovation managers: through the program, they get to know various approaches, case studies, methodologies and experiences in working with the international and local startup ecosystems. The project’s goal is to promote expertise about corporate innovation among top-notch managers — a project sponsored by CREATORS and available to our members for free.
All of these reasons have made it worthwhile for us to work as a non-profit. We have been a driven and professional organization with a boutique, tailored approach. We often competed for projects with for-profit companies. But, at the end of the day, we have a privilege in that we do not need to copy-paste methods and programs to cut our costs and make more profit — we could invest 100% in each program that we did because at the end of the day we worked for quality and impact — for our partners and for innovation environments they work in.
And there has been nothing better for me than coming to work every day and knowing that instead of maximizing profit, I can focus on doing the best job I can do to support innovation economy on a local and global level.
