Hicham Abdessamad, chairman at technology producer Hitachi America, and Paul Holland, managing director and VC-in-residence at Mach49, have provided advice on how large corporations can achieve organic growth and how to partner with them at the GCV Digital Forum 2021.
Abdessamad and Holland discussed how Hitachi has been exploring social innovation and detailed the various corporate venture capital initiatives the company is currently involved in.
Abdessamad said: “Social innovation is something we started six years ago and it is simply using innovation to solve some of the world’s biggest problems.”
He said by doing so, Hitachi can contribute to society and can create value for the environment, the economy as well as the ecosystem it is a part of.
Abdessamad also said that one way it is trying to drive organic growth is by starting to think entrepreneurially as a company.
He provided a tutorial for how a large corporation such as Hitachi can adopt Silicon Valley-like strategy, through activities such as recruitment and partnerships.
He said that to follow in Hitachi’s footsteps, a corporate would need to build a small team, secure a small amount of capital and engage in a fail-fast methodology.
“You need to fail a lot of ideas early.”
Abdessamad added that for its partnerships, Hitachi looks for organisations that are like-minded, trying to solve problems and creating something new.