InoCrowd has become fashionable!
Belém, Lisbon, from CCB balcony at sunset.
Dear Friends,
This was a full week, with interesting important events on overlapping dates… a fool’s week, really!
Two relevant meetings for InoCrowd in Lisbon in the same week: the 27th Digital Business Congress, at Centro Cultural de Belém, and Biotech Week’s Open Innovation Day, at AESE Business School!
I cannot tell you about all the many interesting ideas, people, studies, news… I came across at both events, so I choose to mention a few thoughts that came up into my mind during one or two sessions at the apdc congress.
Open Innovation
A panel of distinguished relevant corporate CEO speakers have spent a whole session engaged in discussing and explaining this topic!
In fact, these two meaningful words, this exciting and enthusiastic concept, spreads like a cloud hovering around however different the discussed subjects may be!
Isn’t it remarkable?!
Looking back only 5 years from now, when I started visiting large and small companies speaking about InoCrowd’s Open Innovation model, this was such a novel idea most key executives seemed to ignore it, scowl or regard it with considerable scepticism!
How come it has now become such a fashion concept among entrepreneurs, R&Ds, Innovation Managers and top executives?
Maybe, InoCrowd’s already long list of important Success Cases also helps understanding this actual trend!
Because it WORKS!
It ACCELERATES Innovation!
It INCREASES competitiveness!
It CUTS costs and SAVES time!
Women in Leadership
Another panel, all women this time!
Being a woman, and the CEO and founder of my own company, I found myself suddenly wondering if this still is a valid topic to include in a technologic business congress in 2017!
Hélas, yes! Women in key executive positions are still too rare!
And why should this be? Aren’t we coming out of university in higher numbers and with the best marks?
Aren’t there increasingly more female medical doctors, pharmacists, judges, teachers… in all careers where there’s no subjective recruitment requirement or gender precondition, nor any intervention or interference from men in the selection? In fact, in the a. m. careers women already outnumber men! So, meritocracy only would risk reversing the situation 180º!
Thus, setting percentage quotas for women, or all-women shortlists, may help redress the gender imbalance in companies’ and organisations’ executive boards.
Not because women need protection; not because women don’t have enough worth or merit; only to avoid discrimination, prejudice and artificial exclusion from top management positions!
Belén Amatrian, the senior more experienced woman in the panel, also shares my opinion, and puts “poetry” aside!
Women in organisations are good at all levels of responsibility and management; gender imbalance is bad for the people, the company and the overall society!
It’s great to acknowledge that InoCrowd’s ahead both as refers Open Innovation concept and gender balance!
Kind regards,
Soraya Gadit