Corporate Startup Summit Zürich

On November 20^th and 21^st, SparkOptimus was proud sponsor and present at the Corporate Start-Up Summit in Zürich– Europe’s number 1 conference on Corporate Venturing, supporting all Innovation Managers, Digital Leaders, Intrapreneurs and Change Makers from all over the world to make a real and lasting impact every day! During the two- day summit, more than 200 bright participants came together to learn from each other, exchange with international experienced professionals, and discuss best practices with other ambitious intrapreneurs. Topics were focused on business ecosystems, collaboration, co-creation, intrapreneurship and corporate start-up engagement.

On day two, Magali Deloof (Lead Switzerland) and Joris Koning (Partner Amsterdam) hit the ‘Best Practice Slam’ to share their view on how SparkOptimus made innovative disruption work for the Heineken Company with Heineken’s new venture ‘Beerwulf’

Magali & Joris shared their passion and enthusiasm for craft beer with a mini quiz on ‘Beerwulf’ where the winners could take home a ‘Beerpack’ containing 16 different beers – obviously widely shared and tested after the presentation by the whole audience. Next to being excellent quizmasters, our Sparkies shared five key lessons learned concerning building ventures within a corporate setting:

1. Be customer first
2. Ensure strategic alignment with the Mothership
3. Claim your independence
4. Don’t hire the ‘guy from Amazon’
5. Agile is not an excuse not to have a plan

Participants of the Corporate Start-Up Summit greatly appreciated the Keynote Speech and came up to us to share their very positive feedback, to be summarized as: “SparkOptimus is one of the few parties who really know what they’re talking about and who can break down the challenges in simple & understandable language”.

We were delighted to meet all these bright-minded people from all over the world and are already looking forward to the next edition!