Everyone knows the benefits of innovation in both the corporate and political fields, yet not everyone is aware of the similarities between the two. Juan Verde, international co-director of Barack Obama’s reelection campaign and Pedro Moneo, CEO and founder of Opinno, sought to emphasize this comparison in the last monthly team event held by the Venezuelan Business Club.
The rooftop of the Club Financiero Genova was the venue chosen so that all those interested in the topic could enjoy the two speeches. After a brief introduction and welcoming message addressed towards the audience, Moneo broke the ice with a speech entitled 'Corporate Innovation'.
His presentation focused on a basic idea: "Exponential changes occur more and more often." The rapid pace of technological innovation revolutionizes society in an increasingly dramatic way and in a progressively shorter period of time. This includes the need for companies to reinvent themselves and adapt constantly to evolve their business models which cannot seem to be implanted for long periods of time. "All companies or industries will observe disruptive changes in their sectors and if they don’t reinvent themselves, they die" he concluded.
For that reason, the Lean method was heard once again during an event about innovation as a solution to survival in a difficult and unstable environment. Pedro Moneo mentioned the importance of the Lean Startup to be able to “design, prototype and quickly validate new projects into the market so that they do not become obsolete."
In the second presentation, Juan Verde spoke of the 'Obama Method'; the quantum leap of his innovative policy and the key to his political campaigns which are applicable to the corporate world, highlighting that "carrying out a campaign is finding talent, retaining it, sell, mobilize, motivate and persuade. It has a lot to do with a company."
"Obama has revolutionized the way we communicate and how to manage that form of communication. The key: social networks," he added.
In the way we communicate, Juan Verde called attention to aspirational politics as "a way of speaking directly and easily. Obama does not talk about figures and statistics; he talks about the future, about the hopes which appeal to the feelings of the audience."
Regarding communication management, defining objectives and strategies, the provision of resources and a leadership model granting power to the people were named as the keys to the innovation policy carried out by the U.S. President.
The last idea that Juan Verde presented in his speech looked to emerge the commitment of new talent, stating that "we have to reward the meritocracy of young volunteers in the campaigns, just as we have to reward entrepreneurs in the corporate world."
Innovation was once again constituted as the necessary nexus between companies and survival in the industry, and was indemnified as the main ingredient to implement and understand politics.
