George Patin.

Learning by organising.

I landed in the UK in 2021 to study business & strategic economics in Edinburgh. Alongside the degree, I started getting involved in the organisations around it: student societies, entrepreneurship programmes, volunteering, pitch competitions, anything I could find.

In 2023, I established a projects department at AIESEC in Edinburgh and led a team of eight. We delivered YouthSpeakForum Scotland, found partners and organised workshops. I later shifted to AIESEC UK level before eventually joining the global section.

In parallel, I was joining every conference I could find and participating in a lot of startup sprints to build a feel for impactful problems, how to actually grow a venture, and thinking about innovation more broadly.

In retrospect much of it was rather meandering, but I learned an immense amount just trying one thing after another.

Innovation challenges & sprints → Broader projects

Going global.

Soon I joined AIESEC International, moving into global account management, coordinating a talent and CSR partnership across branches in India, Hungary and Italy. It was my first role of this calibre working with a major international client, as a student no less. I also helped facilitate a conference in Slovakia and became an international delegate to the UN ECOSOC Youth Forum, spending a week in New York alongside some 400 other global delegates.

Impact consulting was another lens. I worked on German & Nordic market entry research with 180DC, later leading a team to build out a GTM strategy for a pre-seed startup. Alongside that, I helped build a startup community with Edinburgh Entrepreneurs, worked on strategy and careers at Accessible AI, and organised fintech events through Edinburgh Business Society.

Scaling & consolidating.

Around 2025, my work shifted more explicitly to innovation.

I co-founded the START London hub and accelerator working on partnerships, events and half a dozen things besides. One of the key events was a Road to START Summit competition with six startups pitching and the winning team progressing to Switzerland.

I wound down that initial chapter when our team shifted to other projects. In retrospect we didn’t nail the positioning right and didn’t build capacity quickly enough. Building a lasting organisation is far trickier than a bounded, one-time project. You need to have flywheels, continuity, a firm functional vision, and you have to ramp it up fast. I’m glad we took the bet, and I took away a lot from START.

Meanwhile, the 180 Degrees Future Leaders Programme and Potentia Fellowship linked me with other young leaders thinking about the same problems. Through Potentia, I led a team developing a partnerships strategy for Global Shapers London. Later, being part of Stanford ASES London brought me back to product work: user interviews, prototypes and pitches for Praxis and SerenBio. Praxis, an adaptive learning-management system, won the programme’s halfway hackathon.

2025 ended up being a major learning sprint, after which I started thinking much more seriously about where to focus my efforts.

Understanding & shaping innovation.

All of the above gave me a uniquely intersectional lens on change and innovation. I became deeply interested in frontier tech alongside systems thinking & innovation ecosystems.

That became my Edinburgh dissertation on Deep Tech Innovation Ecosystem Orchestration, and later landed me a place on a UCL MSc in Digital Innovation. I also moved to London around then to be closer to one of Europe’s most vibrant startup hubs.

Right now, I’m splitting my time between Meridian, LVCN and Noetic, tracking the frontier tech that shapes the future while advancing the ecosystem on the ground.

Looking beyond one ecosystem.

Learning about other countries & other ecosystems is one of my greatest pleasures. The world’s a big place; I always try to move around.

At one point I organised myself a startup summit “tour”, volunteering with 6–7 different summits from Sigma Squared to Latitude and START. Several sponsored opportunities sent me to China, Germany and Riyadh on a range of programmes.

I was also part of three UN engagements: as a delegate to the ECOSOC Youth Forum in 2024, a finalist in the UNIDO InnoYouth Challenge in Vienna in 2025, and a speaker on youth-led entrepreneurship and skills at UNIDO’s 21st General Conference in Riyadh later that year. I also facilitated education sessions in Slovakia and Malaysia through the World’s Largest Lesson programme with AIESEC.

There is much to learn from different corners of the world. I do my best to keep learning.