Si Partner Announcement Naked Innovations

Hello everyone, and welcome to another SI Network partnership announcement video. Today we are delighted to welcome our newest partner, Naked Innovations, to the SI Partner Network. In today's video, we will learn more about Naked Innovations, explore the collaboration opportunities between SI Network and Naked Innovations, and hear why this partnership is an exciting step forward for both the partners. Joining me today are Ryan Edwards, founder of the Naked Innovations, Josh Licester, founder of the SI Network, and myself, core team member at the SI Network. Ryan, it's wonderful to have you join us today. To begin with, could you tell us a little about Naked Innovations and the work you do? >> Sure, thanks very much. Thanks Josh, and hi everybody. Now, it's a pleasure to be here. Um, so Naked Innovations has existed about nine years now, and our whole mission has been how to make food system more connected towards a regenerative future. Um, and on that journey, we've been working through a number of venture programs, um, incubators, venture studios, accelerators. We've had over 550 impact startups go through them, always in agri and food. Um, and we've been doing that from from Peru to Japan, from Canada to the Middle East, and uh, all across Europe. Um, we realized on the journey that it's not only about startups. This has been kind of our progressive, always learn-by-doing approach. They they aren't they they can't be the heroes to change the whole food system. It's way more complex than that. So, where we're at is we really now are the creators, if you like, between a controllable helix of government, communities, um, industry, and academia. Um, always around a challenge in a local place, which can then be shared, the learnings and the resources, uh, beyond that locality, sometimes even globally, which is the mission that we're on. Um, and it's really moving from an industry-driven approach, which is where I started my career 20 years ago in agriculture and food, towards really looking at a holistic system. Um and and through that we've now developed a network of living labs for our our program, which sit around the world, enabling us in in different bio regions to to scale uh from challenge to solution. Uh but it takes it takes a lot of amazing people uh way beyond my brilliant team, and that's why I'm so excited to to join the SI network as a partner so we can really uh tap into that more and share and share our learnings and resources, too. >> Thanks for sharing, Ryan. Uh Jos, I'd love to hear from you. What does this partnership mean for the SI network? And what opportunities do you see emerging from this collaboration? >> Great. Thanks, Roma. Uh good to be here. See you, Ryan, uh Roma. And um yeah, so I met Ryan at our meetup from our Barcelona hub earlier in the year, and we started the conversation about what we might do together. It's been great to learn about Naked Innovations and the work that you're you're doing uh Ryan. It's really impressive. Um So, couple things have already uh come up for us. We we started our Finance Lab together. Um myself, uh Ryan, and Ushma were the founders of that. We're exploring how to do systemic investing or investing for systems innovation, systems change. It's a huge topic. Um plays into the work that you're doing at Naked Innovations around transformation and so forth. Plays into what we're doing at SI. So, that's uh an ongoing collaboration running over the next uh 4 5 months or so. And um we've also got the conference coming up in Barcelona. So, I guess Barcelona is kind of the thing that uh ties us together in a big way. Um I have a background in Barcelona, and Ryan and the team have been based there for a while. So, we've got the conference coming up in Barcelona. Just announced it today. So, that's October. Hopefully going to have Ryan and team uh join and share some of the work that they're doing. Um also, we've been uh talking about the world's first uh co-working space for systems uh systems work, systems innovation, and transformation. And that's more of a a long-term thing, but can we set up a hub in Barcelona, or a co-working space for bringing people together who are doing this sort of work? So, there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on there. So, yeah, great to get this started, and uh yeah, I'm excited about what follows. >> Thank you, Josh. Um Ryan, what excites you the most about this partnership? >> Uh thanks for the question. Yeah, and I just I get excited even listening to Josh talk there about all the interesting sections. Honestly, we've been thinking and acting systemically since we were born without sometimes even realizing it. And during that journey, having a lot of resistance. I mean, Naked Innovations is 9 years old now. Um but I've been 20 years as I say in agriculture and food, and there is not a lot of joined-up thinking. It's it's it's well known that the food system, or food industry, better word actually, is very siloed. Lots of big players, uh and lots of SMEs in between who who are focusing to internally um and inwardly. Uh with a lot of sort of influence um on on governments and investors. And what we're seeing though, slowly but surely, is this movement towards trying to understand that it is truly a system, and it's very complex, and there are many challenges, and and we're we're suffering that in some ways now with the lack of food security that many countries are are facing. So, there's there's uh so much we need a crisis to to motivate us as as a as a human race. And we're seeing a lot of governments actually scrambling towards, "Oh, how do we actually look at our food system, and what do we do?" And and so, there's an opening opportunity, I would say, for us right now. And in a way, I'm so grateful to know now that SI Network exists. Already, we've got a lot of value out of uh working with with the core team with Josh. Uh but also, just exploring the the the platform and the community, and and reading a a of really smart um insights and and content is shared on there, but also just connecting to people. Um I I've been to a few events and then found actually this S SI network people at the same events and you then actually then gravitate to each other and and hang out and and go a bit deeper. So, um for me it's kind of knowing that we're not on this journey alone. There's And also the food system, I'll mention this, is is quite um conservative. And there's a lot of other industries out there who've already gone on a bit of a transformational journey towards uh acting and thinking in a systemic way. So, we can learn from them uh and also at the same time share what what's happening in food with them. So, yeah, really excited to to join um and and already been enjoying the benefits. >> It's amazing. Thank you uh Ryan and Josh for sharing. Once again, we're delighted to welcome Naked Innovations to the SI Partner Network. And we're excited to see how this collaboration evolves. If you'd like to learn more about uh Naked Innovations or explore the SI Partner Network, you'll find a link in the description below. And if your organization is interested in becoming part of the SI Network, simply click on the link in the description and write to us. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you once again for watching.