Gamechanging Insights No. 13:
Sonia Sennik in Conversation with Candice Faktor
We welcomed Sonia Sennik, Executive Director at the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), on this week’s Gamechanger Sessions, our livestream series created to share the wisdom of brilliant minds and hearts during these uncertain times.
CDL is a remarkable example of an organization that has thrived in uncertainty, throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. They seamlessly created and implemented CDL Recovery, an accelerator focused on COVID-19 related public health or economic recovery solutions-- all within 8 weeks.
Above all, they are supporting companies “creating in uncertainty” that are helping society deal with pandemic health and economic recovery. Sonia provided discerning insights into the CDL’s thesis on COVID-19 recovery, start-ups focused on COVID-19 solutions, and leadership through the crisis.
1. What is CDL?: It’s a Marketplace for Judgment
CDL has a big, audacious mission: to accelerate the commercialization of science and technology based companies for the betterment of humankind.
The most valuable resource start-ups need access to at the seed stage is judgement. CDL is a marketplace for judgement. On the supply side, they provide seasoned entrepreneurs, investors, and scientists. On the demand side, there are individuals with great ideas that have never built a business before and need guidance on the commercialization process.
The marketplace for innovation is now truly global, with $245 billion invested globally into ~18,000 startups via venture capital financing in 2018.
2. Novel Responses for Novel Circumstances
“We learned a lot about what the mentor saw would be feasible also where the expertise lay in our mentor pool and how CDL… could most effectively drive the information based problem forward.”
CDL recognized that the striking economic cost of individuals being bound to their homes since the start of the pandemic is the result of an informational gap. Simply put, if we knew who had COVID-19, there would be no economic crisis.
Because policy decisions have been made in extreme uncertainty due to the informational gap, CDL is most focused on information based solutions which involve predicting who is infectious, who is immune, and developing tools to leverage this information for rapid response and contingent decision-making. Sonia emphasized that always on solutions like lockdowns, PPE, and physical barriers are expensive and costly to our economy.
There are two extremes for when the COVID crisis will end in CDL’s world. The good outcome is that wide scale distribution of a vaccine or treatment is achieved by the end of 2020. The bad outcome is we achieve none of these before the end of 2023. CDL Recovery is designed to prepare for the bad outcome.
3. Innovative Breakthroughs Helping Drive Response
Gamechanger has found that the market for innovation around COVID recovery solutions is remarkably competitive on account of the fact that individuals around the world are incredibly motivated to solve problems directly or indirectly related to the pandemic. Undoubtedly, there will be successful opportunistic players during this cycle, but companies will need to be exceedingly deliberate in pivoting with COVID solutions and find very strong product market fit.
Sonia highlighted that, “It's not that there's so much innovation in the traditional sense, we are seeing a significant redeployment of existing innovations...I'd say our top challenge in the context of recovery and public health is identifying which of these repurposed initiatives can address the information problem.”
CDL Recovery has already witnessed how competitive the COVID recovery solutions space is having received over 600 applications from over 45 different countries since inception.
WIth globally distributed companies competing in the space, Sonia emphasized that “[CDL mentors] have their antenna up on making sure that the company is being very clear on where they can make the most impact. And it could be to stay doing what they’re doing.”
One CDL company that was previously focused on paper-based Zika virus testing has now pivoted to create COVID testing solutions. Their goal is to provide rapid, reliable and low cost testing solutions due to the high volume of testing required in the pandemic.
CDL Recovery also consciously broadened the scope of companies allowed to participate in the program to beyond seed stage. Not for profits, innovation teams from large corporates, later stage Series B, C, D companies are all encouraged to participate because of the urgency of the problem.
4. Business Leaders Will Act Like Prime Ministers
In learning from CDL’s thesis, Gamechanger agrees that business leaders have a whole new level of responsibility during this COVID crisis.
Business leaders will encounter the same level of scrutiny Prime Ministers face, as they address the trade-off between short-term profit and safety with policy. Above all, they will need to assume all liability. As companies bring employees back to work, CEOs will have to monitor their own curves, their own cases, and the health of their employees.
They will also need to be monitoring the curves of their customers, throughputs, and shifting demand in a recovering economy.
Sonia highlighted that there is going to be a need for information sources and technology that will feed into strategic management opportunities to help business leaders navigate through the crisis.
Privacy concerns are hotly debated among CDL mentors as it is among government policy-makers. It is not clear how companies will and should handle the pressure being placed on health concerns over privacy concerns.
5. Lessons Learned on Virtual Transformation
CDL created CDL Recovery for hundreds of constituents and transformed it into a fully integrated virtual experience for mentors and companies across the globe in less than 8 weeks.
CDL’s strategy in their digital transformation was to start with their core values and be relentless about protecting them as they re-designed virtually. Sonia emphasized the importance of “being relentless in following the organization’s core values in the transformation, even if it takes 10x the original stack to replicate it virtually.”
CDL also recognized the need for a community platform during the crisis. Naturally, they built and released CDL Community portal which digitizes the experience with onboarding information, an internal communication system, note-taking system, scheduling all in one place.
Sonia concluded by reflecting on her hopes and expectations for the good outcome with CDL Recovery’s efforts underway. “It’s been really inspiring to see the innovators and mentors rally. They give so much of their time, attention, and imagination to these problem sets so I’m really confident with amazing teams, mentors, ventures, and MBA students coming together that the future we want will arrive, maybe sooner than we think.” We hope you enjoyed these insights from our session with Sonia Sennik.