News &
Events

17/07/2023

The River Stories

Our Netherlands team has put up a large poster showing scattered Gevasol companies along the shores of a river. Here is the story behind the poster, as told by Gideon Yadin, who co-founded Gevasol at that very Holland location.

Yuval Makover, CEO of Octal, read a children’s book, Bear Came Along, to his two little sons—and sent it to me. “You got to read this,” he noted, “it’s a book about Gevasol.”

The first character in Bear Came Along is a river that flows through a forest, but it only knows it is itself once a bear comes along.

Bear’s appearance on the scene begins an adventure. As Bear floats down the river, he meets all kinds of other animals that join him.

The river serves to unite very different groups of animals. Each animal has a distinct personality and story, but they come together as they journey on the river.

A journey toward what? They don’t know! They take it as it comes and work together for the joy of the joint journey.

Yuval was right. This story is the story of Gevasol in more than one way. Here are some that I can think of:

The river sets the story. The animals joined together not because they had a strategic plan to join. The natural flow of the river and their being at the right time in the right place got them together.

Each animal in the book has a trait or knowledge and lacks knowledge of something else. For instance, the beaver knows how to navigate but needs to learn about detours.

So is Gevasol. We complete each other. We embrace the diversity of our backgrounds and disciplines because it helps us stay afloat on the river. Together, we create new things out of our combined expertise.

In the book, the river only knows it’s a river once Bear comes along. Then it becomes the force that brings various animals together and bonds them to a joint journey.

So is Gevasol; we started because we wanted to own a factory. We had no plans of creating a “group” of such size. Gevasol became the river that carried us and other companies on this journey.

So what am I? The captain?

I am a guy who keeps looking around and listening. The real captain is the river.”