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Chile Teaches The World A Lesson About Innovation
Chile launched a grand innovation experiment in 2010: it paid foreign entrepreneurs to come and visit for six months. It offered them $40,000 plus free office space, Internet access, mentoring, and networking. And, by the way, they would get to live in one of the most beautiful places on this planet, where housing was relatively cheap and corruption and crime were almost nonexistent. All Chile asked in return was that the foreigners interact with local entrepreneurs and consider making the country their permanent home.
It seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? Indeed, many people thought that the idea was crazy. But Chile was making a bet — that the foreign entrepreneurs would transform its entrepreneurial culture by teaching the locals how to take risks, help each other, and form global connections.
The experiment, called Start-Up Chile, was such a runaway success that, in an Oct. 2012 story, The Economist dubbed it “Chilecon Valley.”
Santiago is today buzzing with entrepreneurial activity; university students often look to join start-ups rather than big companies; Start-Up Chile has gained brand recognition in innovation circles worldwide; and local entrepreneurs are becoming more ambitious and looking for opportunities abroad. This is what I have personally observed during my trips there.
Start-Up Chile has also been flooded with applications—more than 12,268, from 112 countries. According to Start-Up Chile’s executive director, Sebastian Vidal, 810 startups from 65 countries have so far been admitted into the program. The first 199 companies that visited Chile and returned home reported that they had raised a total of $72 million in funding. A batch of 132 companies that chose to stay there reported that they had raised $26 million. Several start-ups have had successful exits, and hundreds of others expect to make it big.
This is pretty good by entrepreneurial standards, considering that Chile has invested only about $35 million in this experiment. Other countries have spent hundreds of millions — even billions — of dollars in their efforts to create technology hubs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/06/11/chile-teaches-the-world-a-lesson-about-innovation/
It seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? Indeed, many people thought that the idea was crazy. But Chile was making a bet — that the foreign entrepreneurs would transform its entrepreneurial culture by teaching the locals how to take risks, help each other, and form global connections.
The experiment, called Start-Up Chile, was such a runaway success that, in an Oct. 2012 story, The Economist dubbed it “Chilecon Valley.”
Santiago is today buzzing with entrepreneurial activity; university students often look to join start-ups rather than big companies; Start-Up Chile has gained brand recognition in innovation circles worldwide; and local entrepreneurs are becoming more ambitious and looking for opportunities abroad. This is what I have personally observed during my trips there.
Start-Up Chile has also been flooded with applications—more than 12,268, from 112 countries. According to Start-Up Chile’s executive director, Sebastian Vidal, 810 startups from 65 countries have so far been admitted into the program. The first 199 companies that visited Chile and returned home reported that they had raised a total of $72 million in funding. A batch of 132 companies that chose to stay there reported that they had raised $26 million. Several start-ups have had successful exits, and hundreds of others expect to make it big.
This is pretty good by entrepreneurial standards, considering that Chile has invested only about $35 million in this experiment. Other countries have spent hundreds of millions — even billions — of dollars in their efforts to create technology hubs.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/06/11/chile-teaches-the-world-a-lesson-about-innovation/
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