40 Minute Mentor

November 16, 2022

How The Metaverse Is Changing Defence, with Joe Robinson, CEO of Improbable Defence

“It’s okay not to know. It’s not okay not to learn.” 

The Metaverse often makes headlines, but what does it really mean? 

In today’s 40 Minute Mentor episode, we’re joined by Joe Robinson, the CEO of Improbable Defence.

Improbable is a British metaverse technology Scaleup and Unicorn, that partners with video game developers, entertainment companies and defence institutions to help them bring to life rich, powerful, virtual worlds of unprecedented size, scale, ambition and usefulness. 

We’ve had the huge pleasure of working with Joe and the Improbable team, and we’re so excited to share a bit more about their incredible journey and Joe’s impressive career journey to date. 

In today’s episode, we chat about: 

➡️ Why leadership doesn’t have to have all the answers [04:38] 

➡️ The importance of mental resilience and resetting priorities [05:44] 

➡️ Joe’s 10 years at the Ministry of Defence [07:06] 

➡️ What the military has taught him about team dynamic [08:34]  

➡️ How you build resilience and why empathy is the key to it [11:43] 

➡️ What Improbable does and how it works in Defence [15:27] 

➡️ Why the CEO role is the worst defined job of all [20:12] 

➡️ Lack of sleep, accountability and making decisions as CEO [23:20] 

➡️ Joe’s definition of the Metaverse [25:37] 

➡️ How you put company values into day to day practice [30:59] 

➡️ Making your values part of your company’s DNA [35:28] 

➡️ Why you can’t lose track of the ultimate value you’re building [39:42] 


Helpful links:

➡️ More about Joe: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-robinson-20b2664b/ 

➡️ More about Improbable: https://www.improbable.io/ 


💙A big thank you to our Sponsors:

Alchemist – an industry leading learning and development company, whose learning journeys and experiences help organisations who want to grow, change or transform by putting the learner first to optimise organisational performance.

To learn more about Alchemist and see how they work with some of the most innovative companies in the world, head over to https://thisisalchemist.com/40minutementor/ to find out more. 


🤝Explore Hidden Pages: 

For this year’s Black History Month, we’ve had the great pleasure of partnering with Samuel Tholley and Hidden Pages – a zine discovering hidden Melanated history & lists of sources exploring the Melanated/”Black” experience. 

We talked about his motivation behind Hidden Pages, why it’s so important to normalise black history and he shares some amazing historic figures we can all learn from.

This is only the beginning of this partnership, so make sure you check out our initial conversation with Samuel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF_-blY_kUQ 


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