During the week of Nov. 11-15, I had the honor of participating in the 10th edition of Semana Internacional del Emprendimiento at Universidad del Pacífico in Lima, Perú. As program manager of the Innovation Ecosystems program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, I was invited by Emprende UP, the Universidad del Pacífico’s business innovation and incubation center, to give a presentation about our collaboration on a project of capacity building and strengthening of the incubator’s programs and staff.
I also had the opportunity to speak about the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Atlanta and at Georgia Tech. The audience included Peruvian government officials, academic and private sector leaders, faculty, students, and entrepreneurs from the country’s leading universities.
We have been collaborating with Emprende UP since November 2016 on a project funded by Innóvate Perú under the National Contest for the Strengthening of Business Incubators. Under this project, our goal with Emprende UP was to create a framework of knowledge transfer and best practices in business incubation and acceleration to the Emprende UP staff.
In total, we completed three main tasks — an evaluation of the incubator’s programs and operations, an immersion program in innovation and business incubation at Georgia Tech, and a strategic capacity building workshop in Lima, on key topics around business incubation and technology transfer, with particular emphasis on the financial technology (FinTech) industry.
As a result of this project, the Emprende UP team strengthened its knowledge and expertise in entrepreneurship methods like Customer Discovery, Lean Startup, and Design Thinking. The team also incorporated these concepts to its incubation and acceleration programs.
In addition, we validated Emprende UP’s programs structure and its operations model based on a benchmarking against our sister program at Georgia Tech, the Advance Technology Development Center (ATDC), and a leading university incubator in Chile.
Emprende UP is one of 21 incubators that have received funds from Innóvate Perú and is consistently recognized as one of that nation’s leading organizations in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Through this collaboration, we successfully transferred new knowledge and tools to the Emprende UP team so it can further provide the valuable startup incubation programs and services for which it is known.
It was an intense, vibrant week packed with outstanding presentations and meetings. I met amazing people and learned a lot about the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in Lima and Perú, and returned to Georgia Tech energized and very optimistic about the future of entrepreneurship in Perú.
I think that such events are an excellent basis for promotion and exchange of experience. Good luck to you!