In November, the Venture Capital and Corporate Investor Executive Program was held at La Salle Campus Barcelona. The goal of this active, dynamic program is to share and learn the best program methodologies and practices in venture investing. The program was taught by Prof. Jerome Engel, a world-renowned expert in venture capital and innovation education. As Adjunct Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, he is the founding executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, and the faculty director of the Berkeley Venture Capital Executive program.
The pace of innovation is accelerating, changing markets and creating opportunities and challenges. Venture capital and entrepreneurs are partnering to create ventures of astounding value, global impact and financial returns.
Major corporations are threatened as never before. Changing opportunities that exceed their internal capabilities require a rapid response. At the same time, entrepreneurs are creating new ventures with new technologies and business models that enable the rapid scaling these corporations need, disrupting traditional value chains and markets. Through ‘open innovation’ platforms such as Corporate Venture Capital, Venture Capitalists are investing in these start-ups, allowing them to experiment, innovate and scale rapidly. Once the purview of Silicon Valley, this has become a truly global phenomenon.
Participants at the Venture Capital Programm of La Salle-URL
The Executive Program on Venture Capital and Corporate Investors have provided a perfect framework of Clusters of Innovation for Corporate, Investors, Entrepreneurs, Universities and Managers of Innovation Ecosystems, while gaining an understanding of the rules of the game in the Growth Industry. Participants are now ready to have a major impact in their communities by fostering effective innovation for capturing new opportunities and delivering new business models for entrepreneurs that will scale in the path to the exit plans (IPO or Merge and Acquisitions).
The participants in this excellent Executive Program can boast several key takeaways: how to grow an ecosystem by sectors with all players (VC’s, start-ups, universities and corporates), how to set up a strategic plan to get into the ecosystem that should be structured and inclusive, as well as the importance of connecting students, start-ups and companies. They learnt the value of communicating the win-win reflections to enhance trust. They have understood how to drive corporations to have a more proactive participation in the BCN ecosystem, where government inclusion is significant. In addition, they have learned the importance of engaging and involving students through Demo days and developing programs for student engagement, paying special attention to creative students.
