ISTAT Jetrader - Spring 2023 - 18

PERSPECTIVES
would include the Avolon succession,
culminating in my stepping off as CEO
in July 2022. Avolon has been such
an important part of my life; naturally,
the day I announced my departure
was an emotional one. It was an
honor to lead such a special company
for so long.
Jetrader: Company culture is very
important to you, and you pride
yourself on invoking loyalty from
people through the culture of your
companies. What is the key to
creating a healthy company culture?
DS: It depends whether it's a startup
business, a legacy business or a midlife
What was our higher purpose as a firm? It took
me a long time to figure it out, and then it came to me that
our higher purpose was to be the thought leader in the
decarbonization of the global aerospace industry.
Jetrader: You are chair of Vertical
Aerospace, a coming eVTOL
business. What motivated you to
invest in this space?
DS: During the early days of COVID-19,
I had been really wrestling with this
question in my mind: What was our
higher purpose as a firm? It took
me a long time to figure it out, and
then it came to me that our higher
purpose was to be the thought leader
in the decarbonization of the global
aerospace industry. This was a big,
audacious, multi-decade goal that
would be very hard to define, but it
became a rallying call to employees,
because when these young graduates
come out of universities today, they
are very purpose focused. That
decarbonization piece led us to a
couple of individual projects during
the COVID-19 period. So, during the
worst of COVID-19, I put a small team
together to figure out how we, Avolon,
could lead in the electrification of the
airline industry. Some of my board
thought I had grown four heads but, in
retrospect, this was always going be
the right thing to do. Ultimately, that
led to identifying Vertical Aerospace
and becoming a fundamental believer
in this electric adventure.
18 * THE OF F I C I AL PUBL I CAT I ON OF ISTAT
business, but I'll give you the Avolon
story. When we started Avolon in
2010, there were about 15 of us in the
company, and a key thing for me, from
day one, was that we had to clearly
define what our cultural values are,
and then we had to work really hard
to determine what are the behaviors
we expect from those values. But
the last thing we could do was go up
on a whiteboard and say, " Here are
our values. " So we put a small team
together, and we said, " Come up with
what you think our five values should
be, and I desperately need you to come
up with an acronym to capture them! "
I had learned over the years that most
people in most companies have no clue
what their stated corporate values are.
If we could just remember the acronym,
then we'll remember the values.
We have a concept in Ireland called
a parish, which is basically a small rural
setting. The church is at the center,
the pub is there, and various members
of the parish are there, and everybody
knows where they fit in. You know your
role, and you know what's expected
of you. I wanted to have a concept like
that but that would resonate globally,
so that ultimately became TRIBE. TRIBE
was the acronym for transparency,
respect, insightfulness, bravery and
ebullience. If you asked every single
person at Avolon today what our
cultural values are, I'd bet they'll be
able to tell you.
Jetrader: Can you share your vision
for the Innovate for Ireland program?
DS: The history of this goes back to
Project i. Ireland is more or less the
same size as Israel, by population
and geography, and the quality of our
academic institutions are more or less
on a par. But when we looked at the
number of companies in Ireland that
were founded in 2010 or onwards
that had gone public, Ireland had one,
which was Avolon, and Israel had more
than 50. I wanted to understand why
that was the case. So, I put a team of
four people together, most of them in
their 20s, and I took them out of the
business for three months, asked them
to travel the world to the centers of
innovation and figure out what are the
ingredients for success. They did that,
came back and we pooled our findings.
That became Project i. It was a written
report we gave to the Irish government.
It's available on the Avolon website,
and it basically said for a country to
be sustainably successful in having
an entrepreneurial and innovation
ecosystem, you need the following
things. Some are soft, like culture, and
some are hard, like fiscal supports,
but one undeniable metric that we
uncovered was that the more high
caliber PhD research you have going
through a country's university system,
the more innovation will be generated.
Project i was completed before
COVID-19, and we let it sit there for
a while because COVID-19 hit, but
at the end of 2021, I had made a
decision that I wanted to take that
metric and create a fund that would be
large enough in size to get 1,400 PhD
students to come to Ireland, pay them
a competitive stipend, and recruit these
PhD students looking through a prism
of innovation, and focus on solving the
global grand challenges. We went to the
Irish government and said, " This is the
ISTAT Jetrader - Spring 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of ISTAT Jetrader - Spring 2023
