Thank you to Paloma Arumburu of Endeavor Perú and Lorena Molina-Irizarry of the Census Open Innovation Labs (COIL) for joining us for an Evolve Innovation Network conversation around launching a corporate innovation service. Paloma shared insights about lessons the Endeavor Perú team has learned as they created and continue to iterate on their program, embracing and encouraging open innovation. Replay the webinar now and see below for selected highlights from this conversation.
Paloma’s Path to Endeavor Perú
Paloma shared a brief bio and background on her career that led her to Endeavor Perú. Her early jobs were in large corporations like Coca-Cola, before she moved on to an entrepreneurial career starting her own snack brand La Purita Verdad, that she eventually successfully sold. With this background, Arumburu was fit to join the Endeavor Perú team as a marketing director, eventually taking on the role of establishing open innovation as a service for the Endeavor Perú entrepreneurial ecosystem.
What is Endeavor Perú?
Endeavor is the world’s leading community of high-impact entrepreneurs that works to select entrepreneurs to join their network by searching the globe, identifying the fastest growing founders with the greatest potential, and inviting them to participate in Endeavor’s renowned international selection process. Endeavor Perú helps entrepreneurs overcome growth obstacles through mentorship, workshops, and consulting. The Endeavor model is to Select, Support, Invest and Elevate Endeavor Entrepreneurs, today supporting over 2,100+ high-impact entrepreneurs at the “scale-up” stage, offering them a best-in-class seal of approval and an unrivaled personal and professional network
Benefits of being part of a Global Network
Arumburu went on to share some of the benefits of being part of the global Endeavor network. With over 35 global offices and growing, Endeavor meets the growing demand for high-impact entrepreneurs around the globe. Arumburu shared that there is a collaborative mindset between local offices that enables the sharing of resources and connections, thus increasing the scope and impact of the work of the Endeavor network and its entrepreneurs.
Open Innovation Model
Open innovation incorporates external knowledge and resources into innovation efforts within a corporation, often these resources or expertise come from startups or scaleups. Arumburu shared that the open innovation model is new to Perú, so there has been a process of education and proving benefit to corporations. Similarly, on the startup side there’s a process of gaining trust and alleviating hesitancy to mesh startup culture with corporate culture. Endeavor Perú holds open innovation workshops to educate corporations on this new way of working, and further detail the advantages of pairing with a startup or scale-up to solve their business needs.
Scouting, matching and pilots are the early stages of a successful open innovation partnership at Endeavor Perú that lead to a proof of concept or minimum viable product (MVP). This relationship, trust, and framework building sets up ways of working for the startup and corporate that enable an ongoing, mutually beneficial partnership to continue.
Lessons Learned, Rollouts, Success Stories & More Questions
Evolve webinars are interactive conversations that allow the audience of innovation leaders to ask questions of speakers. Arumburu fielded a handful of questions from the audience that covered lessons learned, the evolution of the program over time, success stories, future plans and more. Replay the full webinar now to hear all of the insight shared across this engaging conversation - and join our next Evolve webinar to be a part of the conversation yourself!
Writing by Nick Fisch, Digital Media Strategist at Orange Sparkle Ball, Inc.
Nick is a storyteller and communicator that provides digital media and social media strategy and execution to clients in Corporate Innovation, Public Health Innovation, Startup Acceleration and more.
