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Open Incubation

Team-up.

Hack together.

Share.

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Open Incubation – a lean governance model for venture teams

Most successful companies and organisations once started as a project. Open Incubation is a governance model for venture teams to enable effective collaboration between participants during the journey of a start-up, from incubation to incorporation. The mission of Open Incubation is to help entrepreneurs to team-up, hack together and share. 

The Open Incubation framework consists of 4 building blocks: the Roles & Contributions, Rewards, Values and Rules of Engagement

The rights and obligations of the venture team members are governed through six pre-defined roles, each reflecting their role and contribution to the venture. The Open Incubation model recognises the following roles:

  • Founders
  • Founding Investors
  • Friends, Family & Crowd
  • Key Team Members
  • Venture Partners
  • Investors
  • Leavers

Rewards are the currencies of a venture. Open Incubation recognises the following rewards:

  • Leadership 
  • Ownership
  • Cash
  • In kind compensation

The values of a venture team will give direction to motivational questions such as ‘what is important to us?’, ‘what is our purpose?’ and ‘why this venture?’ but also drive the culture of the venture.

Rules of Engagement are a set of rules that are applied by a venture team to establish an effective collaboration. Often the Rules of Engagement are following the venture values.

OPEN INCUBATION WHITE PAPER

The Open Incubation Canvas

We believe that the best way to practise Open Incubation is to facilitate an Open Incubation lab session where the venture team works together to shape their venture governance based on the Venture Governance canvas.

To facilitate venture teams to discuss and apply Open Incubation, we have designed the Venture Governance Canvas. The 1.1 version of the canvas is depicted on the next page. You can download a printable version of the canvas.

We recommend to print the Venture Governance Canvas on A0 format. For a small venture team consisting of three to four members A3 will do as well. Use as much as possible post-it notes as the drafting is a dynamic process that requires you to go back and forth. 

For more information on the practicalities of working with the Open Incubation canves, we recommend to download and read the Open Incubation whitepaper.

FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE OPEN INCUBATION CANVAS