Open Innovation Challenges with Agorize at Web Wednesday HK (Nov 27th)

Innovation is all the rage in the corporate world - "accelerators", "hackathons", "design thinking", "crowd-sourcing". But, what is it all about and which approach really delivers concrete outcomes?

[A search for "innovation types" on Google brings up a whole string of numbers to summarise approaches to innovation, "3 types", "4 types", "4 Ps" etc.]

For our 121st Web Wednesday Social Mixer, we are looking to venture deeper into the business of idea sourcing with Mathieu Toulemonde, Asia CEO of Agorize, a world leader in online open innovation challenges.

Their offering is extremely timely as they tap into the huge demand for crowd-sourcing new business ideas, as well as some good CSR /PR, for companies who want to engage the wider community of innovators (students, developers and startups).

The numbers speak for themselves: in the last three months, his team of 35 people has enticed 10,000 participants who have proposed 3,000 innovative projects to 15 corporate clients! Clients include major multinationals, including AWS, BNP Paribas, Coca Cola, L'Oreal, Pernod Ricard and Microsoft. They're even helping the UN to come up with new ideas for "sustainable agriculture".

Mathieu practices what he preaches and is very proud of having successfully developed an internal culture of "empathy and individuality" for which he has recently been awarded the "Best Employer Brand 2019".

In April this year, Agorize raised US$14.6M in Series B funding led by Creadev, alongside Sofiouest and existing equity holders, Iris Capital and Capnamic Ventures.

We will be hosting the event at Levels Club in Central Hong Kong, 2/F, On Hing Building, 1 On Hing Terrace, Central, Hong Kong. [Google Maps]

Doors open at 6:30pm for networking and the fireside chat begins at 7:20pm or so. We close up at 9pm. We charge an entrance fee of HK$100, which you can either pay at the door or in advance (preferred method), via PayMe.

See who else is coming across our social media communities on Facebook , LinkedIn and MeetUp.

Here's a taster of what's to come from my recent #852reboothk interview.