In December 2022, Dr. Tomislav ("Tom") Mihaljevic, CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic, was reflecting on the last few years at the hospital, marked both by unprecedented challenges and remarkable achievements. Cleveland Clinic had recently been ranked the world's second-best hospital. Dr. Mihaljevic was especially proud of the special recognition given to Cleveland Clinic's COVID-19 pandemic response and attributed this to the hospital's 77,000 "caregivers" (defined as all clinical and nonclinical personnel at the hospital). Despite ongoing challenges, from an anticipated operating loss in 2023 to extreme burnout for caregivers across the hospital enterprise, Dr. Mihaljevic was contemplating ambitious Objective Key Results (OKRs) for 2023, particularly for caregivers. Dr. Mihaljevic and his executive leadership team grappled with the latest pressing issues in their weekly team meeting. They had missed their caregivers targets two years in a row, but Dr. Mihaljevic still thought it was best to set stretch goals for 2023. As they thought about the need to attract and retain caregivers, they recognized how imperative it was to accelerate their digital journey. The executive team was now considering how to achieve this by leveraging technology and data to improve patient and caregiver experiences. It was not clear what 2023 would bring for the hospital, but Dr. Mihaljevic remained optimistic about the year ahead and delivering on Cleveland Clinic's four care priorities: patients, caregivers, organization, and community.

In the summer of 2023, Eduard ("Eddie") Croitoru, Vice President (VP) of ICL Group ("ICL") Corporate Initiatives, was reflecting on ICL's internal ideation program, the Business Innovation for Growth (BIG) Accelerator. When Raviv Zoller became the CEO of ICL in 2018, he recruited Croitoru, then his Chief of Staff, to help embed a culture of innovation throughout the company. He tasked Croitoru with addressing employee engagement and innovation challenges, which led to the creation of BIG. BIG enhanced ideation of employees (called "BIG Agents"), accelerated execution of ideas, and improved collaboration within the organization. Under Croitoru's leadership, BIG had evolved into a process where ICL employees from around the world contributed ideas, many of which would go on to be realized and funded as projects by senior management. Croitoru spent three years refining the program, expanding its reach from 3,500 to all 12,500 ICL employees in four new languages. To push the program forward, he anticipated two challenges ahead-continuing to scale BIG company-wide while combining technology with the human infrastructure needed to optimize the program's success, and fostering more breakthrough, "extra-corerestrial" (beyond the core business) ideas within BIG.

In August 2023, Raviv Zoller, CEO of ICL Group, discussed his upcoming business trip to St. Louis with Eduard Croitoru, VP of ICL Corporate Initiatives, to commemorate the construction of ICL's new $400 million advanced manufacturing facility. In preparation for the facility's launch, Zoller reflected on the transformation of an employee idea into a new and exciting business line for ICL-lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery manufacturing. When he first became CEO of ICL in 2018, he initiated a cultural transformation and tasked Croitoru, his then-Chief of Staff, with launching a company-wide innovation program, the "Business Innovation for Growth" (BIG) Accelerator. BIG became a crucial part of ICL's internal innovation foundation. Simultaneously, Zoller focused on cultivating external innovation partnerships by building an ICL ecosystem, launching the company's agri-food tech startup hub (ICL Planet Startup Hub), collaborating with Israeli and non-Israeli startups, and exploring possibilities in emerging innovation domains. Zoller hoped that the corporate theme for 2023, "Year of Partnerships," would continue to inspire his colleagues to do the hard work of ecosystem-building for the "art of the possible," in years to come, even in the face of tough economic times.

It was December 10, 2020, and Ed Bastian, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Delta Air Lines (Delta), had just finished a meeting with Joanne Smith, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, and Keyra Lynn Johnson, the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer. The objective of this meeting was to review Delta's first public communication about Bastian's decision to join the OneTen coalition, where he and 36 other CEOs committed to recruiting, hiring, training, and advancing 1 million Black Americans over the next ten years into family-sustaining jobs. For months, Bastian had been in continual dialogue with his colleagues about how to respond to the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Black and Brown people and an increase in racially motivated violence, including the murder of George Floyd. Bastian had committed Delta to being the "Atlanta City Lead" of OneTen. Although Delta had been "bulldozed by the pandemic," he had signed onto OneTen with no hesitation. Smith and Johnson had raised many questions when first learning of OneTen, but they too had agreed that the initiative was consistent with Delta's own anti-discriminatory action plan. He agreed with his colleagues that Delta's approach to OneTen be strategic and sustainable. He recalled his response at the time: "I [don't] know what this will turn into," but "we have got to start somewhere."

In January 2023, Delta Air Lines (Delta) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ed Bastian and his team had just launched the third iteration of an internal skills-first apprenticeship program, designed to move frontline employees into "merit" positions in four job categories. The move to implement an apprenticeship program further advanced Delta's commitment to OneTen's "skills-first" strategy for Black talent. The DE&I and Talent teams launched the pilot program in March 2022 and the second iteration in July 2022. The program grew with each iteration, but the post-mortem of the third program revealed that Delta did not yet have the "bandwidth" to grow the program, and the program would require more leadership development and support for the managers and mentors of the apprentices. The team recognized that they had to figure out how to scale the program with some speed, but knew that change management would take a couple of years. Despite the challenges ahead, the skills-first apprenticeship program had only affirmed for Bastian that Delta was headed in the right direction, as they were better as a company when frontline employees graduated into different skills and opportunities and brought their knowledge of the business into corporate functions of the company. What, if anything, could they do to scale the program faster without sacrificing quality?

In February 2023, Delta Air Lines (Delta) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ed Bastian, celebrated the airline's OneTen partnership in a room full of Atlanta's prominent business leaders, educators, and public servants in Atlanta, at a OneTen/Delta Launch Event. To support their commitment to OneTen's strategy, Delta had designed and launched a skills-first apprenticeship program, and its IT department graduated its first cohort of the "Next Gen Academy," a skills-first IT development program. Delta had also been building relationships with key stakeholders, including talent developers and non-profit initiatives, to create a local OneTen talent ecosystem. However, Delta remained the only Atlanta company signed up with OneTen. As Atlanta's "OneTen City Lead," Bastian hoped that the OneTen launch event would encourage other companies to help build out a robust ecosystem for Black talent.

In January 2023, Raja Al Mazrouei became the Managing Director and Acting CEO of Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI) in Dubai, UAE. In her previous role as the Executive Vice President of the DIFC Fintech Hive, she successfully built and led an accelerator program for start-ups in the financial technology (fintech) sector in Dubai. The Fintech Hive has had successful partnerships with established banks like Emirates NBD and accelerated over 200 start-ups in the MENA region. Al Mazrouei and her team embraced recent technologies and evolved their business models to keep up with the global digital space. With Dubai's ambition to be one of the top ten metaverse economies by 2030, Al Mazrouei's last mandate as EVP of Fintech Hive was to strategize on how to deepen their partnerships and remain at the forefront of technology. She decided to focus on the metaverse with her long-standing partner, Emirates NBD. Although some questioned whether the metaverse would create value for those in the financial sector, this project kept Fintech Hive and Emirates NBD on the cutting edge. Together, they created a global accelerator program for metaverse start-ups to enhance customer experience, contributing to the country's agenda. It was clear to Al Mazrouei that building partnerships, like the one established with Emirates NBD, would continue to be critical for success in her new position. She was eager to collaborate with her new team and fulfill the country's ambitions by building the culture and capabilities required to embrace innovation and digital technology across the Dubai government and economy.

norbloc was founded in 2016 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Astyanax Kanakakis and his co-founders, Vitalii Demianets and Sam Saatchi. Kanakakis and Demianets got to work to address a key gap in the industry: Know Your Customer (KYC) data sharing. As the first distributed KYC utility in the world, norbloc focused on platforms that connected financial institutions and governments, allowing the auditable sharing of sensitive information with the consent of the owner. norbloc connected with Emirates NBD in 2017 as one of 12 start-up finalists in the first cohort of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC)'s fintech accelerator, known as Fintech Hive (The Hive). After the formal program ended, Kanakakis and Emirates NBD's leadership joined forces to make a step-change in KYC. In February 2020, after over two years of negotiating legal agreements, conducting pilots, and reviewing the regulatory implications of the platform, Emirates NBD signed a production agreement with norbloc. After announcing a collaboration with UAE banking players to develop a UAE KYC Blockchain Consortium and scaling norbloc's internal operations, Kanakakis reflected on how these opportunities all started with the DIFC Fintech Hive accelerator program.