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Pilot projects between corporates and startups are a dime a dozen, just about any large corporate can do one. The problem, according to my guest today, is after the pilot – why is it that so many startups’ solutions don’t end up scaling within a corporate post-pilot, and what can be done about it?
I speak to Jose “Pepe” Pascual, head of Cencosud Ventures – the Corporate VC unit of Chilean retailer Cencosud, about how they lean away from what he calls “hipster procurement”, as he described typical venture-clienting, and lean instead towards a role as a design partner with skin in the game, rather than just a facilitator.
We talk about why the decision was made at the corporate to create a unified innovation track – meaning that the venture unit was put at the forefront of decision making on all things innovation at the company, and how that has affected its approach to budgeting for venture-clienting.
We also talk about how the model has changed somewhat since he wrote his initial article last year on their novel approach, how they’ve gone from a more direct role to one where they also do a lot of hand holding and guiding for business units to innovate, and about the extent to which their model can serve as a blueprint for others, and what prerequisites they might need to replicate it.