By Ibai Martínez, co-founder and general manager of TeamLabs/.
Today represents the beginning of a new era at TeamLabs/. We cannot embark on our second decade without truly thanking all the Leinners and their families who have put their faith in us as the project in which to develop personally and professionally. Especially to those Leinners of the first promotions who put all their faith in us with hardly any references. Sometimes, day to day life prevents us from finding a space to deeply and sincere show our gratitude. Without you all this would have been impossible.
We would also like to thank all the people from the Bigteam who have joined the project since we started. People like Siham Bennani or Ainhoa Zamora who opened a door ton a path which has grown to over 70 people today. Without your time, your energy and your talent all this would not have been possible either. Thank you very much. When we celebrate our 20th anniversary we won’t know how many people will be part of the TeamLabs/ team, but without a doubt, your energy and talent will be the source of inspiration and confidence of the people who will join us. Together we live and breathe this team and lab culture that makes us special. As we say around here, you are good people who are also good people.
In these 10 years, over 2000 Leinners have enrolled in the programme. Over 700 of us have already completed the learning experience. We have managed to make LEINN the university programme with the highest employability rate in Spain, with 97%. 35% of them are developing their entrepreneurial projects, generating wealth and quality employment in their environments. The remaining 65% are developing their professional careers in leading organisations in their fields, intra-entrepreneurship, doing their bit to contribute to the generation of value and impact from their business contexts.
And in the following decade we have the challenge of growing our impact and taking it to the next level. Our Radical Learning Lab has the challenge of developing learning missions for 4 groups: universities, corporations, educational institutions and public administrations.
With university students, we have the challenge of multiplying the impact we are generating from the LEINN degree. To further connect our community of graduates and current Leinners through digitalisation, to develop our own Talent Investment Fund so that no candidate is left out of LEINN for economic purposes. We also have the challenge of creating a new university programme that represents a real breakthrough with regards to computer engineering. What LEINN has meant for ADE, we want to do once again, in this case for Computer Engineering. Can you imagine Leinners and technologists developing projects together, and all the positive impact this could bring to society?
With corporations, we have the challenge of going a step further than what we have achieved in recent years. We have managed to get companies such as Google Spain, Repsol, Telefónica or Ikea to hire our services. We have developed learning and open innovation missions for their employees, users and other stakeholders. We are working on developing a solution for corporations that integrates the entire learning strategy in the same digital platform, following our methodology of learning by doing, through projects and by working in teams. Where employees can develop the most critical and strategic knowledge, skills and core competencies for the future of their company.
We are also strengthening our commitment to projects in order support the transformation of educational institutions. We have already worked with over 10 universities on a national and international level. Universities such as the Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Milan Polytechnic, Haga Helia in Finland or the University of A Coruña have chosen TeamLabs/ to help them design new subjects, new programmes or train lecturers. In this field, it is worth mentioning the work we have been doing for the last 3 years with the CEU San Pablo University. We have provided support to 16 of its centres, helped to update the pedagogy, methodologies and curriculum of over 90% of its degrees and helped to train more than 400 teachers. We have assembled a team specialised in this area of development. What began as a response to requests for support has become a permanent hands on department at TeamLabs/.
Finally, more and more public administrations are seeing TeamLabs as a partner that can contribute to their strategic and territorial challenges. We have developed projects for the US Embassy, for the Regional Government of Extremadura, for the PEMB (Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan), and the Government of Aragon, among others. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the invitation we received a year ago from Malaga City Council. They wanted to position the city as a benchmark in educational innovation and asked us what they had to do for us to open a branch in the city. This year we have set up a project with them “Pro_Activar Málaga”, which has had an impact on over 10,000 people and has allowed us to open a permanent office in the city with the first promotion of LEINN already underway.
We are certain that in the following years we will focus our efforts on generating value for these four audiences: young university students, corporations, educational institutions and public administrations. For them we have specialised teams with complementary skills that are focused and able to develop each of these areas.
This mix of diverse projects and allies will continue to build on our mission of making the world a radical learning lab. In the last 10 years we have learned that nothing takes longer to arrive than if it had never started. And that we have not come this far to only get this far. With the humility of those who know that we are only 1% done. That we still have 99% to build and uncover. For all these reasons, Face The Next!
.
SIDE NOTE: Speech delivered at the launch event of the new era and the new TeamLabs/Face the Next brand (19 October 2022).
