Donnie SC Lygonis: Why Innovation Culture Starts With Leaders

We speak with Donnie SC Lygonis; innovation strategist and business coach at KTH Innovation, entrepreneur, and TEDx speaker; on the inspiration behind his non-profit organization, the characteristics of strong innovation culture, the misconceptions of sustainable innovation, and more.  

   

What inspired you to start your non-profit organization, Entrepreneurs Without Borders (EWB)?

I’ve been working with entrepreneurship for the past 25 years — starting my own companies or helping others start their own, teaching entrepreneurship at schools, mentoring entrepreneurs, or judging entrepreneurship competitions, so I have a long and diverse experience in the field, and all of that came to fruition at one defining moment during a trip to India back in 2012.  

I was presenting how we work at the innovation office at the university, and after the talk, one person from the audience came up to me and said: “I’m an engineer here in India and we need what you are building in Sweden. We have people with incredible ideas, but we don’t know how to develop them.”  

On the flight home, I was thinking to myself, “How can I make that happen? How can I start an innovation office in India?” and then I thought “why stop there? Why not start 100 innovation offices worldwide that are connected to each other, so we can spread good ideas faster?”  

From there I then embarked on a journey to get this started, and in 2016 I gave a TEDx talk on this new idea that I then called “Entrepreneurs Without Borders” – shortened EWB, and from there on we have tried and done several different things.

 

How has the journey with EWB been like so far?

It has been a roller coaster ride with a number of trial projects leading up to 2020 when we were just about to start our first big accelerator program down in Kenya together with another NGO, Hand in Hand. They work with grassroots entrepreneurship and help mostly women start a livelihood company for themselves and their families. 

Together with them, we were going to run a project working with the 3,000 people they’ve helped over time, and run the most suitable ones through a 10-month program to help them grow and scale sustainable businesses, all with the goal of creating more jobs, sustainably. Getting people into jobs is key, and has a huge multiplying effect, one person can support up to five people in their social circle.  

Then of course in March 2020 the world turned upside down and all financers pulled out, so that project, together with all other activities, was put on hold.   

Over the course of the pandemic we redefined how we do things, but our why is still the same; to help entrepreneurs create a living for themselves and their families and at the same time try to reach the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Job creation and sustainability are the two main goals of EWB today. 

 

What do people get wrong about entrepreneurship vs social entrepreneurship?

I’d say we need to redefine the word entrepreneurship. At EWB we don’t talk about social entrepreneurship as one thing and then all other entrepreneurship as another. We mean that all entrepreneurship (and all business as such) needs to be sustainable, period.  

Sustainable entrepreneurship should be the only kind of entrepreneurship out there.  

By calling some entrepreneurs “social” you automatically create a divide between them and all the others that call themselves entrepreneurs, which also means that we burden the social entrepreneurs with fixing the world by being socially responsible and the rest don’t have to care.  

We don’t mean that all entrepreneurs need to have a UN SDG goal to reach, but ALL entrepreneurs need to relate to the UN SDGs so they ensure that they don’t make things worse by having a negative impact on the world.  

And this goes for everyone in business today — you don’t need to have a specific goal in mind to reach, but you need to make sure you’re not breaking any of the other ones.  

So yes, all entrepreneurship and all businesses need to be sustainable, and when I say sustainable I don’t only mean environment or climate, I mean sustainability in its full sense, so running a business in an ethical way with fair wages, no corruption, equal and diverse workforce, and understanding contextually your part of society and taking the consequences of that, being socially responsible.  

I often use the quote “Always leave it better than you found it” which applies to life in general and also entrepreneurship and innovation as well. Innovation can get quite carried away. It’s cool to come up with new ideas but we also need to take responsibility for the ideas we bring to life. We need to understand that we’re all part of the same planet, and that planet is not doing very well right now and it needs all the help it can get.  

 

What are the characteristics of organizations with a strong innovation culture?

The most important characteristic is curiosity. Fostering an honest, transparent mindset of curiosity within the organization where people are curious about how to build better products for customers and becoming better versions of themselves. Trust is also very important. Organizations need to trust their people and vice versa. For example, employees need to be able to voice out great ideas and trust that no one else will take credit for them. There’s also freedom. Not only freedom of speech but freedom of ideas too. It’s about creating an environment where people can express different opinions and question how the organization does things without being criticized for it. Those three are fundamental to address in order to become a better and more innovative organization.  

 

Does innovation culture start at the top?

Yes, it starts there, it is a leadership, top-down effort. Leaders need to be honest and open about what they want to see happen, and when they start initiatives, they need to follow through on their promises.  

I’ve seen too many examples of creative workshops and Dragon’s Den events that end up only for show, with little or no follow-through, which leads to it actually being counter-productive since people get disillusioned and unwilling to try again next time.  

And it is also not only about what you say, but also how you say it, organizations make this mistake all the time — they go out and say, “We ARE a curious organization!”, and the employees call their bluff because it comes across as management mumbo jumbo. Instead, I’d like an executive to say, “Look, we know we are an old and tired organization. Let’s all work together to become a fun, playful, curious six-year-old looking for new and fun things to do.” 

 

What are the three things you hope attendees will take away from your session at StrategiTorget Bank & Försäkring 2023?

Firstly, I hope to convey the basics of what makes an organization creative and innovative. I will also be talking about the importance and beauty of ideas; large organizations tend to get scared of new ideas because they think they will take time and cost money. But if we don’t have a dialogue about new ideas, then how will we ever get them? Understanding and being able to separate the two processes; going to work, serving customers, and making money today doesn’t have to be opposed to asking “What are we going to do tomorrow? Where will we be in 10 years? Then of course I want to end by saying: “Now you know how things work – Go talk to your people and make it happen!”.  

 

*The answers have been edited for length and clarity.