One of the great realisations of my life has been that a group can accomplish much more than an individual. That is why it is important to learn, unceasingly, new methods that can help facilitate collaboration.

At Demos Helsinki we do a lot of work in small groups of two to four people. In a typical workday I move from one group and theme to another every hour or two. You hear many complaints about how work is just an endless stream of ineffectual meetings. Many of our employees who have worked elsewhere have said that our meetings are very different from what they are used to: we actually get things done together, and progress is faster than when working alone.

The power of cooperation was one of the great insights we gained during the early days of Demos Helsinki. We read about co-creation, or how things are created when different agents (e.g. an expert and a consumer) collaborate. At the same time, the world around us was changing rapidly, as social media was making its breakthrough, bringing with it many excellent examples of the power of co-creation.

Today, many of the projects at Demos Helsinki involve co-creation in one way or another. We help institutions, municipalities and businesses create new solutions that cross the traditional boundaries of their organisations. For instance, we have developed future local services together with construction companies and start-ups focused on delivery services. This is closely related to our view of contemporary society: fewer and fewer problems can be solved by any one group alone; forming new partnerships has become a necessity.

The opportunity to collaborate with different people and groups is one of the best aspects of my work. It requires its own skills and techniques (which, by the way, were seldom taught at the University) but also a certain kind of attitude towards others. Empathy is important: you must try to understand differing opinions and the backgrounds that may have created them. Feeling like you are right about something will not get you very far. That is not to say that it is worthless to develop, share and when necessary maintain your own opinions.

These methods have made Demos Helsinki a rather unusual place to work. Our working relationship is so close that you have to value your co-workers both as employees and as people. You have to trust that a colleague is driven by that same passion for making things as good as they can be that made me found the think tank in the first place.