The article, "Diversity Icebreaker® and Startups", was written by Dimitris Polychronopoulos, and has been republished below with permission.
It’s been a great experience bringing the Silicon Valley startup accelerator Founder Institute to Oslo. In doing so, we have had the opportunity to work with inspiring Founders to help them with structure, mentorship and network so they can move forward with their idea to help form a viable long-lasting business.
When you set up a Founder Institute chapter in a new city, building partners with people in the local startup ecosystem is a key element. So far, the Oslo chapter has partnered with Selmer Law Firm, Startup Grind, Kasbah Hub co-working space, Miles IT firm, and Diversity Icebreaker®.
About Diversity Icebreaker®
So what is Diversity Icebreaker® and how has it played a role in the Oslo chapter of Founder Institute? Bjørn Z. Ekelund, founded Human Factors AS in 1993, which two years later began to host Ekelund’s concept of the Diversity Icebreaker®. Today Diversity Icebreaker® is applied in 70 countries and by more than 250 000 people.
The Diversity Icebreaker®, which is an assessment tool that can help people break the ice by discussing their strengths with people they may have never met or worked with before. Not only do participants in the Diversity Icebreaker® have the chance to discuss their strong points, but they also get to discuss their weak points. They build a dialogue with people who think differently and who have different priorities from themselves.
At the Founder Insittute in Oslo, we employed the Diversity Icebreaker® at two points. The first time we used the Diversity Icebreaker® was at the VIP Mixer in March of 2018. The VIP Mixer is an event featuring several of the mentors and the Oslo team; we invited all the accepted applicants to attend. At this event Bjørn Z. Ekelund was present to explain the Diversity Icebreaker® concept and we performed the full exercise where we had the chance to discuss the strengths of each category that emerges from the test: blue, green and red.
The second time we employed the Diversity Icebreaker® was at the Orientation where we opened the first session, welcoming the 26 participants and dividing the class into four working groups where they would support each other for the first four weeks of the programme.
At the VIP Mixer, Bjørn told us that it is rare that an individual is a perfect balance of the three characteristics. So we generally score higher in one colour. Let’s take a look at the three categories:
Blue: concrete and practical. Working towards solutions in a systematic manner. Wanting things to be useful and to serve a cause. Analytical thinking, into figures and details.
Green: triggered by being able to do things differently. Fired up by unusual and untraditional ideas. Enjoy looking deeply into a question or issue while looking at the overall picture and new angles for tackling their task. Ambitious with high goals with a far-reaching perspective of future possibilities. Into broad ideas, the big picture, and making connections.
Red: enjoy spending time with other people. Emphasis on social orientation, feelings, and personal communication.
In a setting such as the Founder Institute, where people are founding their own companies, it is natural that Green would be the most common characteristic.
So at the Orientation, when it came time to form working groups, we took at look at the dominant characteristics and formed working groups that were aimed to balance blue, green and red. We created four working groups. Two of the working groups in particular had members with a high score in all three categories. For example, in one working group we had the top scorer in green, a top scorer in blue and the top scorer in red. In another working group we had two top scorers in green, the top scorer in blue and a top scorer in red. The other of the groups had less extreme scores than the first two.
Benefits of Diversity Icebreaker® for the Founder Institute in Norway
So what were the benefits of using the Diversity Icebreaker® for the Oslo chapter of the Founder Institute? The benefits include:
- Self-awareness
- Team development
- Improved communication
- Social interaction
- Appreciating differences
- Constructive group dynamics
- Building trust
- Dialogue
- Appreciating diversity
- Collective reflection
The Founder Institute is a tough programme, and people do drop out. About one month into the programme, we did a follow-up with the working groups. For the two working groups with the most diversity, six of the seven Founders were still in the programme at the time of the review.
Both working groups tested high for autonomy, conflict management, trust, goal orientation, reflection, satisfaction, commitment and external cooperation.
So the Diversity Icebreaker® can be much more than an ice breaker to for social interaction. It has a long-term potential to help on numerous levels as mentioned above. For startup teams, building trust, improving communication and creating constructive group dynamics are vital because the team’s execution of the idea is what makes or breaks the startup.
For more information about the Diversity Icebreaker®, you can contact me or Bjørn Z. Ekelund.
If you are interested in partnering or sponsoring the Oslo chapter of the Founder Institute or the Nordic area, reach out to me, or Alex Hsi or Faraaz Ali.
Founder Institute's first ever Oslo class graduated on June 27, 2018. We have plans to showcase the graduates in the autumn at an event in Oslo. In addition, we will be participating at Oslo Innovation Week on September 26th with an event to connect sustainable startups to investors.
