Babele

I spent three days at an innovation ecosystem conference.

By the end of it, I had heard the word “ecosystem” so many times it stopped sounding like English.

Nobody defined it.

This is completely normal.

Innovation ecosystems belong to a rare category of concepts that become less clear the longer people discuss them.

Around me:
- universities were collaborating with accelerators,
- accelerators were collaborating with governments,
- governments were collaborating with corporates,
- corporates were collaborating with research centers,
- research centers were collaborating with universities.

Everybody was collaborating with everybody.

It looked less like an ecosystem and more like a nature documentary about highly educated birds flying in synchronized circles above a funding opportunity.

Every panel eventually produced the sacred sentence: “We need stronger stakeholder alignment.”

- Everybody nodded.
- The moderator nodded.
- The audience nodded.

One man in the third row nodded with such determination he nearly achieved vertical integration.

Nobody asked the obvious question: "Aligned around what exactly?"

Because beneath all the language of ecosystems lies a slightly uncomfortable reality:

Most ecosystems are not ecosystems.

They are groups of organizations standing near each other while periodically exchanging PDFs.

An ecosystem sounds like a system.

Most are not.

They are:
- conferences,
- newsletters,
- partnership announcements,
- memorandums of understanding,
- strategy documents,
- LinkedIn photos of seven people pointing at the same laptop.

The ecosystem exists primarily as a belief structure.

A startup enters a university entrepreneurship program.

Then an incubator.
Then an accelerator.
Then a grant scheme.
Then an investor readiness program.
Then a science park.
Then perhaps an innovation voucher.
Then maybe a corporate pilot.

Every organization reports success.

The incubator reports success.
The accelerator reports success.
The university reports success.
The public agency reports success.

Meanwhile the startup moves through the ecosystem like a ghost haunting administrative buildings.

Everybody touches it.
Nobody follows it.

Ask a very simple question: How many startups entering your ecosystem eventually reach seed funding?

Silence.

How many reach Series A?

Silence.

How many disappear completely?

Silence.

How many fail because they cannot access customers?

Silence.

How many fail because they received mentoring for 14 consecutive months but never met a single paying client?

Very powerful silence.

The ecosystem speaks constantly about innovation.

The ecosystem knows surprisingly little about itself.

People often describe ecosystems as engines.

That feels optimistic.

An engine at least moves in one direction.

Most ecosystems resemble a rowing team where every person rows with incredible passion while facing a different direction.

- Universities row.
- Accelerators row.
- Governments row.
- Investors row.
- Consultants row.
- Science parks row.

Everyone is rowing as hard as humanly possible.

The boat spins in circles with extraordinary efficiency.

The annual report describes this as momentum.

And the strange thing is: almost nobody involved is lazy.

Quite the opposite.

- Most people genuinely care.
- Most people work incredibly hard.
- Most organizations are trying to do useful things.

The problem is not effort.

The problem is visibility.

A system that cannot see itself is not really a system.

It is a collection of local optimizations wearing a trench coat pretending to be coordination.

Imagine a hospital where every department keeps separate patient records.

- Cardiology reports success.
- Neurology reports success.
- Orthopedics reports success.
- Administration reports outstanding yearly outcomes.

The patient died three months ago.

Nobody compared notes.

Absurd.

Yet innovation ecosystems often operate in remarkably similar ways.

Every organization measures its own activity.

Very few measure the journey.

And the journey is the only thing that matters.

Because startups do not experience ecosystems as stakeholder maps.

They experience them as obstacles.

Can I access talent?

Can I access customers?

Can I access funding?

Can I survive long enough to reach the next stage without developing a psychological dependency on pitch competitions?

The startup does not care which organization provided the support.

Only whether the support arrived when it was needed.

That is what ecosystems are supposed to do.

Not host conferences.

Not produce strategy diagrams that resemble planning documents for a medium-sized military invasion.

Not create 94-page PDFs explaining “cross-sector innovation synergies.”

An ecosystem should be capable of understanding itself.

Where startups progress.

Where they fail.

Where funding bottlenecks exist.

Where market access breaks down.

Where support structures produce actual outcomes instead of inspirational panel discussions.

Most cannot.

Which creates one final irony.

The innovation world absolutely loves ecosystem thinking.

Because ecosystem thinking sounds visionary.

It sounds collaborative.

It sounds systemic.

It fits beautifully inside keynote presentations delivered by people holding tiny microphones.

What it dislikes is ecosystem infrastructure.

Infrastructure is less sexy.

Infrastructure requires shared visibility.

Shared visibility requires coordination.

Coordination requires organizations to occasionally prioritize the system over their individual reporting framework.

And that is usually the exact moment the ecosystem begins experiencing “stakeholder complexity.”

Which is a very elegant professional expression meaning:

“everyone agrees collaboration is important as long as nothing changes.”

Eventually many ecosystems discover something deeply uncomfortable.

They were never ecosystems at all.

They were just silos that occasionally met for coffee.

As part of our work on UnlockEquality, Babele has just completed two research deliverables for WP2 — our first concrete outputs as the platform partner for this Erasmus+ project. Here is what we found and built.

1. EU Legal Framework
We mapped 10 EU legal instruments directly relevant to gender equality at work. The core finding: EU law already sets strong obligations for employers — but most organisations are unaware of the specifics. Key directives include the Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970), the Equal Treatment Directive (2006/54/EC), and the Whistleblower Protection Directive (2019/1937), among others.

2. Practical Checklist — Organisational Policies
We translated that research into a self-assessment checklist for Danish employers, covering three areas: anti-discrimination policy, complaint procedures, and pay transparency. Each item is grounded in EU law and includes a Denmark-specific supplement referencing the Danish Equal Pay Act (Ligelønsloven) and the Danish Whistleblower Act.

These two documents form the foundation of the UnlockEquality toolbox. All checklists, games, and workshop materials the consortium builds next will be grounded in this legal and practical research. The full toolbox will be free and open to all European employers when the platform launches. More updates coming.

We are excited to share that Babele is part of UnlockEquality: Level up your workplace — a new Erasmus+ project tackling gender inequality in European workplaces and adult education.

Together with partners from Latvia, the Netherlands, Malta, and Croatia, we are building a free digital toolbox of checklists, interactive games, workshops, and practical guidelines to help employers, HR teams, and educators move from awareness to real, lasting action.

As the platform and web lead, Babele is responsible for the digital repository where all tools and resources will live — open and free for everyone to use.

Stay tuned for updates as we develop the tools and launch the platform.