Concordia and Innovadores de América: A Deep Dive Into This Year’s Programming Partnership

This week, we sat down with Felipe Pagés, Director of Innovadores de América, Patricia Janiot, Director of Innovadores de América and Anchorwoman at Univision Evening Edition, and Hanne Dalmut, Director of Partnership Development at Concordia, to take a closer look at the partnership and discuss the two organizations’ common goals.

Hanne, can you speak a bit about Concordia’s commitment to innovation and entrepreneurship in Latin America? How does announcing the Innovadores de América Prize at the Annual Summit play into this commitment?

Before any Concordia Summits, we always send out a survey to participants in order to better understand the motivation behind their attendance. The top response from the Americas Summit survey this past July was entrepreneurship and workforce development within the region. We discovered that entrepreneurship and innovation within Latin America is a subject that is really important to our community and network in the Americas. Concordia always strives to create heightened programming that features the content that our participants want to see, whether it be roundtables, strategic dialogues, partnership-forming activities, or highlighting winners of prizes, like Innovadores de América’s, on the Concordia stage.

Concordia’s aim is to use its stage to showcase the next and best ideas. Our goal within this partnership is to enhance the Innovadores de América Prize and simultaneously enhance Concordia’s programming, while directly meeting our objective of highlighting Latin American entrepreneurs. It’s our hope to reach that goal by having the three winners of the Innovadores de América Prize announced on our stage, and then giving them the ability to highlight their specific interventions at a press conference afterwards.

Felipe, how do you see a partnership with Concordia furthering Innovadores de América’s objectives?

Concordia and Innovadores de América share the common belief that cross-sector partnerships are needed to achieve social impact and sustainable development. Our partnership with Concordia will allow Innovadores de América to amplify its objective of promoting innovation as a development tool for Latin America and the Caribbean, while creating an entrepreneurial environment focused on collaboration and inclusion. The addition of Xcala into the partnership will convey technical support for the entrepreneurs and access to mentors and angel investment.

Concordia assists in the dissemination of the message and the potential for economic support from North America. This will be a partnership for action, through the recognition and promotion of the innovation taking place in Latin America and the Caribbean. It will generate spaces for dialogue and reflection on innovation and how to encourage its development, as well as foster support to catalyze innovation into entrepreneurial activity. It will also drive connections between the region´s innovators and entrepreneurs with those from other parts of the world.

What role do cross-sector partnerships play in amplifying these objectives?

Innovadores de América was founded because we are convinced that innovation is essential to achieving a better future for Latin America and the Caribbean. However, through the years, we have realized that it is not enough to recognize and disseminate the innovation developed in the region; it is also key to crystallize this innovation into an entrepreneurship that can transform the knowledge generated into social and economic welfare.

In order to achieve this objective, Innovadores de América has to go one step further, and actively support the development and strengthening of new entrepreneurs. This a huge task that requires the deployment of different skills and tools, as well as access to mentors and investors. As a result, it can only be achieved through cross-sector partnership, based on public-private alliances that will foster a better environment for entrepreneurship across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Hanne, what do you think a partnership with Innovadores de América can help Concordia accomplish?

Concordia wants its programming to be an inspirational platform for entrepreneurs around the world. The Innovadores Prize is a leading award for Latin American entrepreneurs tackling every day and global challenges alike. This partnership with Innovadores de América gives Concordia an amazing understanding of what drives entrepreneurs across Latin America and where they’re taking their innovation. This is especially important for Concordia as it gives the organization the ability to elevate its presence in Latin America and accelerate its programming within the region.

Patricia, as someone with extensive experience in media and reporting, how did you find yourself drawn to something like Innovadores de América?

It seemed obvious to me, due to the overwhelming way in which our Latin American talent was recognized, sponsored, and showcased everywhere. But, it seemed that the artistic and sports fields were the only aptitudes of our people that were taken into consideration and prized for; it felt as if literature, music, and soccer were the only things available in our region.

I felt that the media was not echoing the wide assortment of brilliant Latin American individuals, groups, and organizations that were making very important contributions to our global village in the many sciences and technological fields — not to mention in the economic development and productivity areas, in the socio-political disciplines, in the environmental and social responsibility sectors, in the business ventures. But their work was not only virtually unknown but also flatly ignored. I felt we had to popularize innovation by making those individuals and their contributions to society appealing to the overall media industry.

We are convinced the passion and dedication of these innovators are contagious enough to inspire our people in order to enjoy a better, peaceful, and productive Latin America through their creative effort and work. Creativity and innovation are the key tools to growth. We have no doubt that innovation is a crucial development engine in our region.

What are your plans for Innovadores de América in the next 5-10 years? How do you think a partnership with Concordia can help achieve those plans?

After more than a decade promoting the democratization of innovation throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and given the evolution of the region in spite of the challenges remaining, I think Innovadores de América is ready to move up to a new stage in order to contribute further to the development of the region. As we continue to promote innovation with a wide perspective, we need to deepen our work to help transform the knowledge behind the innovations into a better quality of life for Latin American people. This can be achieved through the development of entrepreneurship.

In this regard, I consider the partnership with Concordia as a perfect match at the right moment. Innovadores de América has the knowledge and experience to collect, select, and recognize the innovations in the region, and has developed throughout the years a strong methodology and a solid database to this effect. Concordia has the connections and expertise to convene, connect, and create strong cross-sector partnerships that can contribute to developing these innovations to achieve social impact. Therefore, I am convinced that this brand new partnership between Innovadores de América and Concordia, with the support of Xcala, can make an important contribution to achieve some of the Sustainable Development Goals, an agenda in which we all must get involved in order to leave no one behind.    

Click here for more information about the 2018 Concordia Annual Summit, including how to attend.