Quarantine memories: network is the key

15 May 2020

Recently the participants of Global MBA of BBS took part in the virtual Leadership Talk held by Davide Dattoli, CoFounder and CEO of Talent Garden, the largest networking and training platform for digital innovation, which now has 23 campuses in 8 countries across Europe.

A European community of digital innovators within a coworking campus network, which has brought its founder in the top 30 Under 30 Europe, the ranking by Forbes that selects every year the 300 young talents who are transforming the industry into the various sectors.

“Listening to the great journey of a young, brave and talented man who shakes the world with his bright ideas, was full of inspiration”, commented Tugba Cimenci, Global MBA candidate and Entrepreneur. “As being a fresh entrepreneur myself – she continues – it was great to share our experiences as he mentioned ‘sharing the vision’ and communication are the key success elements of a startup.

After Covid-19; we all agree that the world will not stay same; our habits, lifestyles and most importantly the way we work is changing forever. We will say goodbye to traditional perspectives like ’employees can be efficient only if they go to office’. We saw that everyone can work remotely, all companies can manage their employees while they are outside of ‘the company’ and the term ‘co-working’ sounds more relevant and acceptable more than ever. It is inspiring to see that a young Italian at his 20s foresaw this years ago and created a unique platform; ‘Talent Garden’.

Davide told us about his journey which started in Brescia. Coming from an entrepreneurial family, he always had ideas on his mind and finally Talent Garden founded with the ‘right people’ around him after a couple of entrepreneurial experiences. The first clue comes here for startups; the team is everything! I found Talent Garden very innovative and futuristic organization that well suits the new era of business life after coronavirus.

But how to make people believe in you if you are a startup? Davide explained it in a very humble and clever way with one simple word: mission! He drew attention to the importance of being vertical and going on a focused target. When I look at many startups, maybe too many mistakes done at the beginning because of losing the focus. When you lose the focus, you see yourself in the ocean forgetting you cannot swim yet. But the reality is when you first start, you are just in a lake not even in a sea. Davide summarized the key point for all startups as; being vertical!

We live in an incredibly competitive world where products and services can only be differentiated to remain in a good position in the market. Differentiation comes with ideas and innovation. Companies started to see that putting employees into offices with same people and same discussions every day does not bring innovation. Talent Garden allows companies and freelancers and entrepreneurs to meet, to work together and to share ideas. The most attractive word I heard from Davide is community: we can move forward only if we share! Isn’t it the most important thing also coronavirus taught us in the last 2 months?

Finishing the conversation maybe with the most important topic; mistakes! Loving what you do and your business, is priceless! But the biggest mistake comes with only thinking about business. Business can be done somehow but, in the center, there is human! What makes us, and our products or services is unique is ‘our ability to communicate with people and knowing ourselves’. What we need is to build up our connections with people and don’t stop sharing ideas!”.