Corporate innovation has become the fundamental ingredient for companies to gain competitiveness and face the challenges of today’s markets, markets that are in continuous transformation and that are for products with an increasingly shorter life cycle. Open innovation, understood as collaboration between corporations and startups, allows the agility and great technological capacity of startups to be transferred to corporations, resulting in a value proposition with opportunities to be more disruptive.
This was the context in which the latest edition of Focus Pyme was held yesterday, the 27th of September, at Jeff Works. This initiative, organised by Startup Valencia and CEEI Valencia, and promoted and funded by the Generalitat Valenciana through the Instituto Valenciano de Competitividad Empresarial (IVACE) as part of its policy of supporting innovative entrepreneurship, was attended by leading professionals who shared real experiences of corporate innovation in our city.
Nacho Mas, CEO of Startup Valencia, and Ramón Ferrandis, CEO of CEEI Valencia, were in charge of welcoming the participants to this event, which started with the round table ”Corporate innovation & startups: a trend or a necessity?”. José Ignacio Ruiz, head of open innovation at GoHub Ventures; Cristian Ull, co-founder of Area101; Luz Adell, partner at Draper B1; and Alberto Escalera, innovation consultant at Elewit, concluded that open innovation should not respond to a trend, as it yields positive results for both parties.
The second round table was led by Nora Romero, innovation coordinator at KM Zero Hub; Francesc Pons, CEO of Innsomnia; Ismael Valero, head of Lanzadera Corporate, and Jorge Marcos, project manager at Opentop. Under the theme of “Boosting corporate innovation from Valencia“, the speakers, moderated by Paloma Mas, highlighted the strength of the Valencian entrepreneurial ecosystem and some of the ingredients that make the city a benchmark region for open innovation, such as quality of life, good climate, talent development, and the innovation factor.
Finally, Karina Virrueta, head of ecosystem development at Startup Valencia, moderated the last panel, which included David Ortega, CEO of Dekalabs; Miguel Ángel Cintas, CEO and co-founder of Atribus; Miguel Silva-Constenla, CEO and co-founder of AllRead; and Joaquín Costa, co-founder and manager of Grupo Casfid, as examples of success stories. All participants agreed that one must be aware of one’s capabilities and must know the product very well, in order to succeed as a startup.
Working together
makes us stronger
