Just a decade back in 2010, BlackBerry was one of the widely used cellphone brands. The phone iconically had a tiny physical QWERTY keyboard and its own built-in messaging service. At its peak in 2011, the company was earning over USD 15 billion from the sale of its cellphones according to data from Statista.
Yet just a few years later, all BlackBerry phones seem to have disappeared and its revenues prove this. In 2015, just 4 years from its peak year, Statista’s data shows BlackBerry had no revenue from the sale of cellphones.
CNN reported that BlackBerry had difficulty keeping up with their competitors until their phones were no longer in people’s hands. The company stuck with making phones with physical keyboards when the market was shifting toward touchscreen phones.
Based on these events, Business Insider reported that the company failed to innovate its cellphone manufacturing business at the time. And they are not alone. Many large corporations struggle to innovate and compete in the market because of their structure, leadership, business model, and more.
Embiggen helps businesses overcome this challenge. We work with local and international organizations to achieve their innovation objectives and reach their growth targets through corporate venture building and venture investing.
Our co-founders Rolan Marco Garcia, Paul Pajo, and Earl Valencia all have extensive experience working on innovation initiatives for corporations, startups, and the academe. We uniquely combine corporate innovation leadership and startup experience under one roof allowing us to build the future and disrupt industries.
Co-founders Garcia and Pajo are concurrently serving as heads of the innovation arms of Far Eastern University and De La Salle – College of Saint Benilde respectively, while Valencia is the co-founder of fintech startup Plentina.
We have exponentially grown since our establishment in 2020, amid a global pandemic. Under the leadership of our co-founders, we have provided solutions for well-known corporations and organizations in the Philippines.
“We partner with ambitious, progressive, and forward-thinking organizations to build, launch, and invest in new digital ventures at startup speed. Essentially, we help organizations achieve innovation-led growth through venture building and venture investing,” said Embiggen Group CEO Rolan Marco Garcia.
Our approach to innovation
Many corporations have gone out of business over the past few decades due to their failure to innovate.
Contrary to popular belief, corporate innovation is not just inventing new products and services. It is also incorporating the process of ideating and implementing new innovation initiatives into a corporation’s business model to contribute to its growth and success.
Our unique approach to innovation utilizes corporate innovation and corporate foresight to take on an organization’s challenges. Corporate foresight allows us to anticipate and prepare for the future, ensuring that the innovations we co-build with our clients will last through the next few decades.
We have a full suite of innovation and foresight solutions that allow us to help organizations from day one of their innovation journeys.
Our corporate venture building arm, Embiggen Digital Ventures, co-builds new competitive ventures with trailblazing corporations at startup speed. If you have an idea that’s not yet on the market, we can co-build it. Our hyperlocal understanding of startups, venturing, and emerging markets puts us in a unique position to diversify and future-proof organizations.
Through our venture capital-as-a-service arm Embiggen Capital, we help organizations identify and invest in up-and-coming startups that have strong potential to increase their bottom line. Our clients gain access to relevant insights and connect with leaders in the venture capital space to help them make sound decisions and invest their resources in the right opportunities.
Embiggen is also making innovation and foresight consulting more affordable. The Embiggen Experts Network gives our clients on-demand access to our innovation, digital transformation, and foresight experts to seek strategic advice on their innovation initiatives at resource-friendly rates.
We also help organizations build their capacity to innovate through innovation boot camps and certifications delivered by the Embiggen Innovation Institute (EII). EII upskills and instills a culture of corporate entrepreneurship in an organization and trains intrapreneurs who are ready to generate new ideas and lead innovation initiatives.
EII offers innovation training and certifications in partnership with one of the top Asian business schools, the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), and the worldwide innovation standard certification body, Global Innovation Management Institute (GIMI).
As the exclusive certified training partner of GIMI in the Philippines, Embiggen offers globally-recognized innovation certification programs. Over 10,000 innovators from corporations worldwide like Pfizer, HSBC, and the Ayala Corporation have trained with and gained certifications from GIMI and GIMI’s certified training partners. With AIM, we offer the first non-degree innovation program in the Philippines, the Post Graduate Diploma in Corporate Innovation & Digital Leadership where students learn the fundamentals of innovation.
Empowering innovation-led growth
Our team of innovation strategists, technology entrepreneurs, digital transformation executives, venture capitalists, and innovation thought leaders are bringing the practice of innovation and foresight into the Philippines, and emerging markets.
Our work empowers the development of the innovation and foresight capacity of organizations and allows the co-creation of ingenious and exciting ventures worldwide.
Despite the numerous health and economic crises plaguing the world today, we tirelessly work to make the world a better place through innovation.
“And the reason why we do this is that Embiggen was founded on the belief that through venture building and investing, established businesses and organizations can help accelerate the creation of solutions to the world’s most pressing problems, including mental health, climate change, water scarcity, and education gaps,” said Garcia.
Learn about the work we do at embiggengroup.com.
Join us at our online launch event on September 8, 2022, to learn more about innovation and the organization. Contact Mykee Dizon at mykee@embiggengroup.com for more details.