Join us for a special evening with The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and Starr Marcello, AM '04, MBA '17, Executive Director, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship for a panel discussion on Driving Innovation through Corporate Accelerators and Incubators.
Event Details
Driving Innovation through Corporate Accelerators and Incubators
About the Polsky Center: The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation bridges the gap between knowledge and practice, idea and action, and research and impact through education, partnerships, and new venture creation. The Polsky Center brings the power of ideas in the laboratory, classroom and community to the world. Through education, resources, and programs, the Polsky Center commercializes discoveries, partners with companies, and attracts venture capital. The Polsky Center runs a top-ranked business accelerator, the Edward L. Kaplan, '71, New Venture Challenge and operates a 34,000 square-foot, multi-disciplinary co-working space called the Polsky Exchange; an innovation fund, the George Shultz Innovation Fund, that invests in early-stage ventures; and a state-of-the-art Fabrication Lab for prototyping new products. Finally, the Polsky Center manages the University of Chicago's technology transfer function that manages all University-based intellectual property originating from faculty research and discoveries, which can be licensed to industry partners and investors.
About the Program: Starr Marcello, executive director of the Polsky Center and adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth will be moderating a panel on the role of corporate accelerators and incubators in driving disruptive innovation. Panelists will discuss the ways in which their organizations foster entrepreneurship and connect corporate partners with young startups. The panel will share their insights into the role that corporate accelerators and incubators play in the UK's entrepreneurial ecosystem. Panelists will explain how their organizations work with startups and provide them with the infrastructure and access to resources needed to connect with partners and customers. Additionally, the panel will provide advice on building your startups' credibility, identifying potential collaborators, and developing new partnerships.
About the Speakers:
- Starr Marcello – Executive Director, Polsky Center; Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship, Chicago Booth
- Warwick Hill – Former Senior Managing Director EMEA, Microsoft
- Andrew Humphries – Cofounder, The Bakery
- Gary Stewart – Director, Wayra UK and Telefónica Open Future
Program
18:30 Welcome Reception
19:00 Welcome remarks by Randall S. Kroszner Deputy Dean for Executive Programs and Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics
19:10 Driving Innovation Panel
20:00 Networking Reception
Speaker Profiles
Warwick Hill (Panelist)
Warwick Hill is a New Zealand business executive with 30 years' experience in the global technology industry supporting FinTech, Telco and Digital Media. Until recently he was Senior MD for Microsoft across EMEA where he led the Startup engagement programs.
Warwick is renowned for successfully building companies in the digital sector. Most notable are the sale of his company, 3rdSpace, a Digital Innovations Agency, that was bought in June 2013 by CCTV, the State Broadcaster in China and one of the largest media companies in the World. Prior to setting up 3rdSpace, Warwick built a telco services company specialising in India and Middle East voice termination which he successfully sold in 2009.
Warwick also works with senior executives of global enterprises to shape their understanding of how both innovative and entrepreneurial approaches solve business challenges while driving new data commercialisation models.
Andrew Humphries (Panelist)
Co-Founder, The Bakery
Andrew co-founded The Bakery in 2013, the World's first corporate challenge-led accelerator, The Bakery is re-inventing the way large corporations innovate, scaling and starting amazing startups that solve real business challenges, creating a win-win for both entrepreneurs and large global companies.
He previously co-founded 2 successful tech startups, raising over $42m in venture funding, and growing both in Europe and the US, before exiting via trade sales.
In 2012, London's Olympic year, he was appointed by The Prime Ministers Office as Tech City Champion, and helped to drive the growth of London's Tech City, Europe's fastest growing creative digital and tech cluster.
Formerly a Dealmaker for the UK Government's Global Entrepreneur Programme, attracting Foreign Direct Investment in the UK, Andrew has helped hundreds of overseas entrepreneurs grow their businesses and go global from a UK HQ.
A highly regarded mentor and supporter of young entrepreneurship, he was included in the Sunday Times Maserati 100, recognising British business leaders who actively give back to the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Starr Marcello (Moderator)
Executive Director, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship., The Polsky Center
Starr Marcello, AM '04, MBA '17, oversees the strategic development of the Polsky Center and works with University of Chicago students, faculty, and staff to launch the next generation of high-impact ventures as the Polsky Center's executive director. She has been with the Center since 2005.
She runs the Edward L. Kaplan New Venture Challenge (NVC), which awards over $500K in funding and services to top entrepreneurial companies each year. This year the NVC is celebrating 22 years and is ranked the #1 university accelerator program in the nation. Since 1996, the NVC has fostered more than 800 startups, with 230+ that are still in operation and growing strong, has created thousands of jobs, and has produced exits of over $13 billion, including Grubhub (NYSE: GRUB) and Braintree (acquired by eBay's PayPal for $800 million). In 2017, Starr testified before the U.S. Congress' Committee on Small Business on the merits of accelerator programs for job creation and economic development.
With funding from the National Science Foundation, Starr launched the Polsky Center I-Corps Program and helped designate the University of Chicago as an official I-Corps site in 2014. Through this interdisciplinary program, Starr teaches elements of the customer development process and human-centered design to researchers and technologists on campus with the goal of helping teams test the commercial viability of their STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) projects.
Starr spends her free time teaching entrepreneurship to high school students. She sits on the Executive Advisory Board of TechWeek and is a board member for United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USABE).
Starr holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University and both an M.A. and MBA from the University of Chicago.
Gary Stewart (Panelist)
Director, Wayra UK and Telefónica Open Future (UK)
Gary Stewart is the Director of Wayra UK and Telefónica Open Future_ (UK).
He is also an associate professor and the Entrepreneur-In-Residence at IE Business School in Madrid. Gary co-founded Nuroa.es, a Barcelona start-up that raised over €4M in funding before being sold to an Australian competitor.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Gary worked as a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in London, and Freshfields Brackhaus Deringer in Spain.
Gary graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University and was the Executive Editor of The Yale Journal at Yale Law School.