We have a very intellectually stimulating and rigorous environment here. “What you find is the folks who want to be really good, they want to be around other people who are really good, and they want to be pushed and challenged. A lot of younger people coming out of school would rather not work for a brand and say they’re doing the startup thing.”īlanquera says finding talent to power the Collaboratory hasn’t been difficult-in fact, the Collaboratory itself doesn’t really do the looking-people come to it. “Their original that was the genesis for the startup was, I will have the panache, if you will, in the marketplace. “Columbus not Columbus, data scientists and experienced talented cyber professionals are probably the two most rare technologist positions, the most difficult to fill in the country,” says Greg Tacchetti, chief information officer for State Auto Insurance, which was the Collaboratory’s first customer beyond the seven investor companies. “I don’t think they would have been successful if they hadn’t done that,” he says. The breadth of thinking among a group of people from diverse industries is invaluable, says Doug Lingrel, chief administrative officer for Delaware-based Greif, a Collaboratory customer. “And through not doing things they save money and time and effort in their own company.” “It helps them to not only do things, but it helps them to sometimes not do things,” he says. McDonald says it’s especially beneficial to learn from a company that is in a different industry and therefore has a different perspective. It was meant to be a tool for bringing talent to Columbus and elevating its tech capabilities, and it was expected to offer a return on investment for the seven companies with an agreement that they would receive services free of additional cost-all with the intention from the seven companies to collaborate more and share in a safe space. The vision was to create a tech provider that could work for Columbus’ largest companies, rather than them continuing to use national providers. Ground zero for the idea was a friendship between chief information officers at Cardinal Health and Nationwide, explains One Columbus CEO Kenny McDonald, who sits on the Collaboratory board. “And so, fundamentally, the big aspiration is, if we collaborate, can we accelerate innovation for ourselves in some areas that matter?” “About six years ago, several local CIOs said, ‘You know, perhaps we could innovate better together,’ ” says Blanquera, who is also the founder of meetup group TechLife Columbus. It will keep expanding in 2020 with a focus on the surrounding states in the Ohio Valley region. The Collaboratory also expanded outside of Central Ohio, serving companies in cities including Chicago and Cincinnati. This is one of its most exciting achievements to date. One of its largest accomplishments to date is the recent rollout of a first product the company is calling the Vulnerability Management Solution, a software and service that helps companies protect themselves in a more effective way. A 2020 goal is to have 30 customers by the end of the year. The Collaboratory’s 36 employees help about 21 customers, which it began to accrue roughly two years ago. Subscribe to Columbus CEO’s weekly newsletter. Stay up to date with the region’s thriving business scene. But since its inception, the Collaboratory’s mission and scope have changed from merely serving the seven investors to becoming a company that can sell its services to the broader business community. The investors are recipients of Collaboratory cybersecurity and analytics services and are also guinea pigs for potential services and innovations, making everything move more quickly. The tech startup, which operates in a building on Battelle’s sprawling King Avenue campus near the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, has been funded by the seven-AEP, Battelle, Cardinal Health, Huntington, L Brands, Nationwide and OhioHealth-for the past six years with a total of $40.25 million. “That doesn’t happen,” says Ben Blanquera, the Collaboratory’s charismatic client-facing vice president. The fellowship runs so deep that the seven companies and the Collaboratory are bound by an eight-way master service agreement ensuring that some of the biggest hindrances to agility-countless discussions about intellectual property and contracting between teams of corporate lawyers-are nil. But they’ve got to admit that the Columbus Collaboratory, a tech company forged through the unprecedented partnership of (and millions of dollars from) seven of Central Ohio’s largest corporations, is an anomaly of collaboration. The adage used to describe the region’s business philosophy, the Columbus Way, may be getting overused for some.
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