Tag: Peru

Innovation Ecosystems Gives Presentation on Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Peru’s Semana Internacional del Emprendimiento

Mónica Novoa, an Innovation Ecosystems program manager, gives a presentation to attendees of the Semana Internacional del Emprendimiento at the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima, Peru.

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.

 

Mónica Novoa (third from left), stands with Universidad del Pacífico officials.

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.

Economic Development Lab hosts Peruvian delegation seeking innovation development

Universidad del Pacifico's Emprende UP
Members of the Universidad del Pacifico’s Emprende UP, were at Georgia Tech to learn about entrepreneurial ecosystems and best practices for innovation development and support. (Photo: Péralte C. Paul)

The Georgia Institute of Technology’s Economic Development Lab (EDL) hosted a group of 12 professionals from Peru’s Universidad del Pacifico who sought to get a better understanding of entrepreneurial ecosystems and best practices for innovation development and support.

 

The group represents the university’s Emprende UP, which serves as its center for entrepreneurship and innovation. Emprende UP runs pre-incubation, incubation, and acceleration programs at  the Universidad del Pacifico, a small, private Jesuit school and highly ranked in Peru and across Latin America.

 

“We chose Georgia Tech because the Tech model in entrepreneurship and innovation is similar to what we are doing in Peru,” said Javier Salinas, Emprende UP’s director. “At the end of our three days here, we recognized that we’re on the right track, but we can improve and refine our services for the Peruvian innovation ecosystem.

 

EDL, a program of Tech’s economic development arm, the Enterprise Innovation Institute, helps communities and organizations apply innovative ideas to economic development in business incubation and commercialization, strategic planning, and economic sustainability.

 

Economic Development Lab workshop
Brandy Stanfield-Nagel (right), program manager and faculty researcher at Economic Development Lab, discusses best practices techniques in startup development, with Diego Joseph Rengifo (left) and Carlos Zapata of Universidad del Pacifico’s Emprende UP. (Photo: Péralte C. Paul)

“The objective of this three-day immersion program at Tech was for the Emprende UP team to experience and learn from the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems here at the Institute and across Atlanta,” said Mónica Novoa, an EDL project manager.

 

“The group learned and acquired key insights and best practices by interacting with us, and with the invited speakers, entrepreneurs, and city officials through a series of intensive and experiential workshops.”

 

As part of that learning process, the Emprende UP team toured Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), which is the state’s technology incubator, and met with some of its startups in the financial technology (FinTech) sector.

 

The FinTech space was of particular interest because Emprende UP has spent the past 18 months developing an ecosystem around it and working with Peru’s banking regulators, leading financial institutions and international technology firms towards that initiative, Salinas said.

 

Beyond FinTech, the team focused on learning about other components that comprise successful innovation ecosystems, such as closer alignment with academics. They also saw how corporations seek to be near universities and tap into those schools’ research and innovation expertise.

 

In the past five years, more than 20 large corporations, including Delta Air Lines, AT&T, and Anthem, have opened corporate innovation centers in and around Technology Square to access the talents and technologies developed at Georgia Tech.

 

“The first takeaway is that we need to work more closely with the academia side — teachers and students,” said Martha Zúñiga, Emprende UP’s head of special projects. “The second takeaway is that Peru is just developing its innovation ecosystem and we have to support the growth of corporate innovation centers, because their inclusion is part of that ecosystem growth.”

 

EDL, which has had projects in 151 of Georgia’s 159 counties and more than six dozen initiatives in 9 countries, will be going to Peru in August as a follow up in continuing its ecosystem development work with Emprende UP.