The Archipelago Network
Our network is smarter than us
Our research department is not inside, but outside our office. We rely on the collective intelligence and experience of our network of business leaders and board members – the Archipelago Network – to bring depth and perspective to our research and add value to our invested companies.
We operate in a knowledge-based business and yet our network is infinitely smarter than us. That’s why we deliberately designed our investment company around it. And even named ourselves after it: Archipelago Partners is simply the investment stance of our social network – the Archipelago.
We devote time and attention to constantly build and nurture this social ecosystem around the sectors and businesses that are a natural fit to our investment aspirations. In a way, our friends define and shape our circle of competence. The caliber, reach, density and quality of engagement of the Archipelago Network is key to our long-term success.
We’ll be only as good as the company we keep. But how to cultivate these relationships?
By proactively sharing with our network members our research on key aspects of their companies and business environment.
It’s very lonely at the top and extremely hard to keep up with all the strategic variables involved while in execution mode – especially when everything around them screams “short-term”.
We actually enjoy helping lucid, competent business leaders to find a better balance between the short-term and the long-term and actually spend more quality time thinking about the really important issues that impact their businesses – and in our most special relationships, even their careers, families and other aspects of their lives.
From board dynamics to talent management, from spotting competitive threats to identifying desirable long-term competencies: we help to improve their peripheral vision.
To help smart, experienced, successful people is tough: it requires constant preparation, interdisciplinary skills and a lot of effort to bring them perspective – valuable insights they sometimes can’t figure out or weight appropriately by themselves. The aspiration to help business leaders raises ones’ standards – by design.
Luckily, we don’t need to have all the answers. Sometimes we help simply by asking useful questions or, even better, by connecting different people (“nodes”) of our network.
The more we help them, the more we learn. And the more we learn, the better we invest.
