The innovation event, which took place in Chile on August 29-30, was the backdrop for more than 20 influential international and Chilean speakers to share their various experiences in the development of corporate venture capital and the implementation of different innovation management models for large companies.

The second version of the event was organized by Innova 360 with the support of Chilean economic development agency CORFO, and was held at Centro Parque, bringing together some of the largest corporations from Latin America, the United States and Europe to promote co-investment between different countries.

José Cuevas, R&D&I leader at Viña Concha y Toro’s Center for Research and Innovation, took part in the panel on “Solutions that transform industry”. The aim of the roundtable⁠—which was moderated by Tomás Peña from The Yield Lab, and also included the participation of Pablo Montecinos, CEO of Iansa, and Fabián Martínez, co-founder of Instacrops⁠—was to discuss corporate innovation, applied technology in agribusiness, and how the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem connects emerging technologies which can offer solutions to companies’ strategic challenges.

During the roundtable, Cuevas highlighted the importance of participating in the innovation ecosystem and ensuring rigorous planning to implement innovation management models. “By partnering with key players in the ecosystem such as CORFO, Wines of Chile and various universities, we have been able to detect and adopt the necessary knowledge and technologies to accelerate developments, and be able to implement digital solutions in processes throughout our value chain, particularly in vineyards. We believe that any innovation management system should have a clear innovation strategy, and must be safeguarded by a disciplined team with established objectives. Finally, there must be evaluation methods in place which enable us to show managers and investors that the innovations we develop have an impact on the business,” he said.