Corporate Transformation Through Startups: The Path to Innovation in Latam

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In recent years, we have seen how large and medium-sized companies in Latin America have faced a series of challenges in their attempt to innovate and remain competitive in a constantly changing business environment.

Many have tried various strategies, from creating incubators and accelerators to direct investment in startups, but the results have not always been as expected.

At SquadS Ventures, we have identified these pains and developed a value proposition that we believe can transform the innovation ecosystem in the region.

Corporate Innovation in Latam: the challenges
Large corporations in Latin America are at a crossroads: they must innovate or risk losing competitiveness. However, the path to innovation is fraught with obstacles. Companies that invest in startups often find that once they grow, usa mobile phone numbers database their valuations skyrocket and the opportunity cost of acquiring them becomes prohibitive. Furthermore, corporations that do manage to acquire startups often face difficulties integrating them into their core operations.

A recent report highlights that in the United States, more than 50% of corporations actively collaborate with startups, while in Latin America this number is less than 5%. This statistic is a wake-up call to the untapped potential in our region. Despite efforts to implement open innovation programs, many corporations find that these solutions do not have a consolidated team or a product that can grow strongly without significant initial investment and shared risks.

On the other hand, when corporations hire entrepreneurs to lead innovation, they often become absorbed into the corporate culture and end up operating at the speed and under the constraints of the company, thereby losing the dynamism and agility that made them valuable in the first place. Corporate boards, for their part, are reluctant to allocate more budget to innovation initiatives that do not show a clear and rapid return on investment, fueling the fear of not innovating in a world where artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies are rapidly changing the rules of the game.