Mind the Bridge's CEO Marco Marinucci sat down with Gary Coover, GM of Samsung NEXT in Silicon Valley, to talk about the Samsung Group and its major open innovation initiatives: Samsung NEXT, NEXT Products and NEXT Fund. Gary, a Bay Area native who spent years in South Korea, has been the 2nd hire at NEXT, an entity that now employs around 200 people in its 4 areas: Products, Partnerships, Ventures and M&A.
Marco Marinucci meets Dennis Clark, the Managing Director of Honda Innovations, in this last episode of Mind the Chat. The evolution of Honda’s presence in Silicon Valley should be looked at as exemplary for corporations that are considering expanding their footprint in the Bay Area: started as Honda Research Institute, then added a CVC unit and R&D team in 2011, and finally morphed in 2017 into Honda Innovations, a separate ~50 people company running 2 major programs.
Launch of the brand-new “Japanese Corporate Innovation in Silicon Valley” Report written by Mind the Bridge with the support of Jetro, during a digital event with the CEO of Mind the Bridge Marco Marinucci and the Executive Director at JETRO San Francisco Noriya Tarutani, both LIVE from San Francisco. Japan is once again the country that has by far the largest presence of corporations in the Bay Area.
In this Mind the Chat, MtB CEO Marco Marinucci meets his homonym leading Hella Ventures, the CVC arm of Hella, the 100+ yrs old German company made famous by its iconic lights for sport cars, now leader in lidar and radar technology (key components in self driving cars) among other things.
We spend some time with another undiscussed trend-setter among seed accelerators: 500 Startups has become one of the most prolific seed investors in the world (~2500 investments) with a strong international footprint. In this Mind the Chat, Marco Marinucci meets its Director of Global Portfolio Services, Aaron Blumenthal.
