Philippe Ceulen On Building Ecosystems That Spark Innovative Entrepreneurship

Philippe is an experienced founder and startup community leader who has worked closely with communities across Belgium, Southeast Asia and Australia. He is passionate about building ecosystems and exploring emerging technologies with early stage founders.

He co-founded The 1961 Coworking and Art Space, supported Airbnb in its growth and acquisition in Cambodia and has been active with the Techstars APAC Community for several years. As former Head of Programs at Creative Enterprise Australia (CEA), he led the design, development and execution of programs to support entrepreneurs across their journey from start to scale: community, co-working, incubation, acceleration and investment.

Philippe is a partner at Innovation Architects, an ecosystem-focused innovation consultancy that partners with industry, academia and governments on strategy and delivery of entrepreneurship, venture building, market access, business growth and investment initiatives. In addition, Philippe is General Partner in the Australian agrifood tech fund Mandalay VC and Executive-in-Residence at Griffith University's Yunus Centre where he supports growing impact-led businesses through the Growth Lab initiative.

Philippe discusses how maintaining innovation friendly ecosystems is essential for growing start-up businesses and his advice for managing mental health under stressful conditions as an entrepreneur.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Tom Allen] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your interest and passion in entrepreneurship?

[Philippe Ceulen] - I'm originally from Belgium, and I lived in South-East Asia for seven years prior to moving to Australia. I do have a very confused accent! I really started my professional life abroad. I'm a Bioinformatician by education, so quite a technical background that I've carried with me throughout the years, but I've never really worked as a scientist. I moved to Cambodia to work on a project that I was a minority investor in, but which was quite a traditional business. It was a rice production and trading company invested in by Cambodian, Belgium and Dutch investors including myself. I moved there into a new environment and set up the company over a period of four years. I grew it into quite a healthy small business in the agriculture space.

When I was in Cambodia, I was very active within the local expatriate community as well, and I realised a lot of us were business owners, managers or founders of those businesses. No one really had the vocabulary around that. We weren't calling ourselves founders necessarily, but we had very similar needs in the sense that we were figuring out what we needed to do next, what tools, knowledge and people we needed. We realised that we all had similar questions, issues and things to talk about and started becoming really passionate about bringing these people together, which led me to starting my own co-working space in Siĕmréab, Cambodia back in 2013. [This was] providing a place for people to come to; entrepreneurs, founders, innovators, business owners could discuss and be a part of different sessions and workshops. The space was called The 1961, and it was amazing. It was a cross between a coworking space and gallery, so we had that creative element. One of my co-founders is an artist, and we always had this really cool and special vibe happening around the space.

Workshop on ecosystem building at Pausefest Melbourne.

Regardless, one thing led to another, I started becoming more involved in workshops, which grew into programs. General community support grew into providing advisory services, and from there that really became a bit of a launchpad for me into not only having a few of my own businesses. I was also very much active in building communities, then building ecosystems and providing services that support growing businesses and start-ups directly, which then led me to the activities I've been doing in Australia since I've been here since 2016. I joined a company called Creative Enterprise Australia when I moved here. Which was a prime innovation hub for innovation in the creative industries which we called creative tech. We would do everything with education, even within curriculum through the Queensland University of Technology to support founders to start, based on an idea they had. We provided incubation services, offices for rent, a coworking space, accelerator programs and investment into those companies. It’s quite a broad set of activities, and it was a big opportunity for me to really develop as a professional program manager and director within this space, and to really continue to develop my community, ecosystem building and business support skills as well.

You are now a Founding Partner at Innovation Architects, tell us a little bit more about this organisation, its purpose and the projects you've been involved in?

The important first thing to say is Innovation Architects are ecosystem builders at heart. We're all incredibly passionate about this space and bring a very diverse set of experiences and skills to the table. We've all been founders, entrepreneurs, investors and innovation facilitators amongst many other things. We truly believe in the force of entrepreneurship to create change, and I guess extrapolating from there, businesses are the vehicles to really materialise some of that change. That's really what we believe in.

We also know as ecosystem builders that it takes a village to support businesses to grow, to be successful and to therefore create the impact that we are after creating.

We've built a business around this which technically focuses on business growth advisory for businesses that consider themselves being in innovation and selling innovative products or models. As Innovation Architects, we provide direct services to those companies, or we'll work with larger organisations including governments, universities and private organisations to interact with the start-up ecosystem through program work. These entities or organisations are looking to catalyse innovation internally, but also externally looking at innovating or investing in the future of their sector by working together with younger more dynamic and innovative companies. That brings us to the world of running hubs, incubators and accelerator programs amongst other things.

You've worked extensively with this large range of different entrepreneurs at different stages of development, what are some of the biggest opportunities in the ecosystem right now to better support these entrepreneurs in achieving strong outcomes?

Probably two things come to mind initially when you ask this. First of all, within the ecosystem (and defining what the ecosystem is a challenge in itself), let's at this stage call it the community around businesses that is required to enable the success of those businesses. From my perspective within the ecosystem, we've lost touch with what sound business practice looks like. In a way, we've focused so much on the innovation side of things that we actually have lots of young companies (and by young I don't mean necessarily the age of the founders, I mean young, dynamic, agile and innovative companies) that are really good at what they do on that side of the equation and maybe not that experienced or focused on setting up a sound business to start. I think that's a huge gap, and it's one where we as Innovation Architects feel we have a role to play. We've played in the innovation space for quite a while.

"From busyness to business" at The Refinery Creative Incubator.

We actually go back to basics and say, "we're building businesses here. What does sound governance look like? Who are the people around you that can help you enable? Can you think of having an advisory board can or other board structures?"

Also there are other things, like can we work with somewhat of skills that seated within the ecosystem that are also sometimes forgotten? What about (and this is probably an age thing) older businesspeople that have built amazing careers over the years. They're probably from a different generation, but they know people, can knock on doors and have tons of life experience they're bringing to the table as well. Can we actually get these people again more involved in supporting young, dynamic, agile and innovative businesses? That's I think one of the big gaps that I'm seeing and we're actively trying to play in that space. The other thing that is always important and what I was saying before, it's about taking a village approach, but also acknowledging that building a business is not only about the internal context of the business, it's also about the business context outside of your entity. This is how do you operate within our increasingly complex world? One of the things that is really important to me personally and which I bring into the company is a concept of boundary spanning.

Can we be boundary spanners? Can we be people who operate within our own businesses, but actually also think of how we add value to other people's contexts and other people's businesses?

How do we help them, and how do they help us? It's not quite your traditional stakeholder approach or partner approach. It's much more about the people themselves, the individuals within your business and other organisations and how they can get the opportunity to meet and collaborate perhaps on things that are not always in the direct context of a transaction. I recognise a lot of your work Tom as well for doing this; sometimes it's as simple as saying, "let's bring people together in a meet up," and the conversations that are happening there can translate into all kinds of projects, ideas and collaboration that just happen organically and really contribute to the success of businesses.

Where have you seen patterns in the shortcomings of early-stage impact-led entrepreneurs, and what advice would you give them as a result?

In the last Elevate+ Program with Homebase and the Yunus Centre at Griffith University, we did this session which we call the Art Of Start. The Art Of Start is actually named after the book by Guy Kawasaki, which is one of the Bibles within start-up land. It answers a simple but not straightforward question which is where do I start? I think that's a huge challenge in early-stage businesses or projects regardless of what they are. What we aim to do at that stage or level is provide focus, tools and accountability to take your first steps. That's the first thing.

You'll always have tonnes to do, so it's about focusing on one small thing you can do first, which, is sometimes seemingly smaller than where you want to go, but at least it's one step forward.

"It's all about community." Phil facilitating Techstars Startup Weekend.

Can we do that? Can we help you do that? Can we provide you the tools to think about that, and can we keep you accountable to take that first step, then the second and then the third? The second thing that I would give as advice is your drive and motivation really needs to be internal. We call this a locus of control, and it's because we see so many problems around us all the time.

We tend to sometimes victimise ourselves a bit and not take full control of the opportunity to create change within a suboptimal situation.

Really working with the founders directly on how you continuously find the energy within yourself to continue to do this work is really hard. There's a huge personal element to working with businesses, and it's all around doing that. There are links obviously to the overall health and wellbeing and therefore productivity and drive of the founder. I guess the last thing we tend to focus on is saying we all know we want to do good, but we also need to think about the fact that we want to do good by doing good business. It links back to business in the broadest sense of the word. Regardless of what structure and business model you have (it can be a variety of different things), but ultimately, it's the overall health of your business and organisation that is going to enable the impact that you are after.

It's easy to get stuck in this situation of you constantly having to do good around you, but you also need to find the time to focus on building that good business or entity to get there. This is easier said than done, I do recognise and acknowledge that. But that would be the three things that I would take into any program that I lead.

What practical advice would you give to other founders to help them stay on top of their mental health and burnout?

I'll start with a story. I've definitely had difficult periods in my life for a variety of reasons. I'm hyper aware of where I am at any moment in time from my energy levels to my overall mental wellbeing, which I think is crucial.

Taking the time to reflect on when you've experienced hardship and how you went through that allows you to see what were the things that allowed you to take that first step back into a better direction.

Another thing, and this is actually quite recent, is very much around that management of energy, which before I never really thought about so much. But I was in a situation recently where I was working really hard and I still am. I was pushing later and later at night. 11 o'clock became 12 o'clock which became one o'clock. I started realising I always was just continuously tired. I was going to sleep late, getting up early, and back into it. I'm a father as well, my son is about three years old now. What I did is actually try to change that around and say, "I still want to do the same amount of work, but how about I go to sleep early?" I was tired and getting up at 4:30 in the morning to do two hours of work before life even starts. That's working really well for me right now, but that being said, I put a lot of flexibility in my day as well, because I do want to see my son. I do want to have breakfast with him, and I do want to have dinner with him. I want to be there. It really made me think the fact that you do need to change things from time to time, that you do need to be in control of how you manage your energy and time, and that you can experiment with that. One of the founders at Techstars, another global group I'm quite involved with, always says it's about work life harmony, as opposed to work life balance. I guess I was never really sure about what that meant.

Balance is having this separation between your work and your life, whereas harmony is much more about needing to find a way in a system that is going to work for you. I think that is foundational in managing your own mental health wellbeing.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you seen recently that are creating some great positive social change?

Fantastic, we've already mentioned the Yunus Centre at Griffith University who have just a world class team. Anything that is happening there I think is wonderful and I would love to continue to be involved with them as well. Another organisation that I've been involved with since 2014 and has been a big part of my personal journey as well is Techstars Startup Weekend. Startup Weekend is what we call the entry point into entrepreneurship globally. It's actually a 54-hour hackathon event which has largely been open sourced by the organisation and serves two distinct purposes. The first one is for participants to come and really awaken their entrepreneurial senses, and again entrepreneurial in the broadest sense of the meaning of ‘I want to do something, I have an idea, I want to create change’. How do I do this? How do I connect with like-minded individuals to help me, or to help me think about these things? This helps find a level of awakening, which is what I already said. An awareness around, “I can actually do this, right?” That's one side, the other side is it's used by community builders and ecosystem builders as a way to catalyse their networks and communities within their own context. We see it actually being used regionally here in Queensland in quite a lot in places like Mackay, Townsville, Rockhampton and the Sunshine Coast. This weekend I did the very first Startup Weekend in the Moreton Bay region, which is obviously not too far from Brisbane, but it's quite distinct at the same time.

It's used by community leaders there to build their own networks and to start to put together what we called the start-up community or the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

It crosses over between innovation groups, investment groups, economic development, departments within councils and various levels of government, and then obviously the SME space and the start-up space. It's quite a powerful thing I've been involved with, and I've seen firsthand that transformation effect. I started the podcast with saying I didn't know what it meant to be a founder or an entrepreneur or a business owner. This was really what gave me the strength, vocabulary, understanding and pathway to find out these things. That for me is a big thing I'm involved in, and there's lots of events happening. For anyone listening who's interested in taking first steps based on an idea, checkout Startup Weekend. You'll find there's plenty of events happening around you, and chances are, if it's locally here, I'll be involved as well.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I do have to admit, I don't read a lot anymore. I do listen to audio books, but I have come across recently a really good book that in a way brought together a lot of the learnings and insights that I gathered over the years. It's a book called Strategic Doing: Ten Skills for Agile Leadership by Edward Morrison. First of all, it's ten skills for agile leadership, not for agile leaders.

Where it all started... The 1961 Coworking and Art Space, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

It's really about leadership as a collective concept, as opposed to just a leader as one person, which is very powerful, and I think will resonate quite well with people doing the hard work on social change and entrepreneurship.

The other part of the book is about unlocking bigger system change by actually doing things that are actionable, practical and achievable. One of the issues obviously you and I see around us all the time is creating system change is really hard when you're stuck at the systems discussion, and ultimately, we need to go out there on the ground and do things. It's really about how can people work together from various organisations, boundary spanners (again as we could call them) to do seemingly small things, but that can actually be done as opposed to staying as some future fantasy that is too big and complex to ever be able to happen. That's what the book is about, and I thought that was really insightful to just see as black and white on paper. I definitely recommend it to everyone.