External Relations
IdeaSpace’s External Relations program focuses on corporate engagement and marketing communications, raising awareness for the organization’s startup support programs and securing opportunities for corporate-startup engagements.
The External Relations team also looks for other potential partnerships or collaborations that would help startups and organizations leverage technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship to address key industry and societal concerns.
IdeaSpace’s External Relations program aims to:
- Raise awareness for IdeaSpace’s startup support programs;
- Encourage and facilitate corporate-startup engagements that would create value to both parties and leverage the creativity, ingenuity, and industry/domain expertise of startups to address key industry and societal concerns; and
- Create linkages between IdeaSpace and other organizations looking to work with startups to encourage knowledge-sharing, capacity-building, and co-creation.
How have we worked with other organizations?
Training and Education
We organize Innovation Mornings sessions for our donors to help them stay abreast of trends and developments and facilitate the sharing of knowledge and experiences across the Metro Pacific Investments Corporation group. One of our most recent Innovation Mornings sessions focused on planetary health and how the climate change crisis would impact workspaces, health, and wellbeing.
We’ve also organized learning sessions for Metro Pacific companies such as Meralco and Maynilad, on topics such as data gathering, idea generation, validation and validation tools, and prototyping.
Mentoring and judging for innovation programs
IdeaSpace started as a brainchild of MVP and the HR heads of the Metro Pacific group to support human capital development and as such, we have been actively supporting the Metro Pacific group’s innovation programs. We have judged for the Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation’s Innovation Olympics.
More recently, we have also mentored a team for the Philippine Star media group’s innovation program.
Business Matching
We also organize business matching sessions, most recently with the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) and with Mr. Manny Pangilinan. For the MAP event, we worked with our Tier 1 startups, which among IdeaSpace alumni is a select group of startups that have demonstrated significant strides in their business and technology development, business growth, and maturity.
Meanwhile, we also set up a meeting early in 2020 with Mr. Pangilinan to introduce the top three startups from the 2019 cohort that IdeaSpace has invested in—Airship, Experience Philippines, Cocotel—and to identify potential areas of collaboration between the Metro Pacific group’s business and the top three startups’ businesses.
We also enjoy a strong relationship with PLDT Innolab to identify promising startups to pursue collaborations with PLDT to co-develop or co-market products and solutions for the different customer segments and industries that they serve.
Co-branded content and events
We have worked with organizations within the Metro Pacific group to co-organize events and co-produce content, notably for major events such as Philippine Startup Week. IdeaSpace has regular events for the general public and for corporations and is open to co-hosting and co-branding these with organizations actively working with startups or looking to develop stronger relationships with IdeaSpace startups.
Corporate Social Responsibility
We have also connected IdeaSpace startups with organizations within the Metro Pacific group to support their advocacy and corporate social responsibility programs, particularly in areas such as health and education.
As IdeaSpace has also incubated tech-enabled social enterprises, we believe that one opportunity to form corporate-startup engagements is to work with organizations to support their ongoing CSR programs, support programs aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals, or to co-develop programs to address the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic or by other larger-scale challenges such as climate change.
Why work with IdeaSpace?
IdeaSpace has linked up with Google for Startups to bring training resources, access to potential funding, founder development, and business development opportunities from Google and its partner accelerators to Filipino founders.
IdeaSpace enjoys strong linkages with local accelerators, particularly with local technology business incubators, through its involvement in capacity development programs led by the DOST and the EU.
IdeaSpace has built a mentor and judge pool through the years and can tap our network of mentors and alumni to support innovation activities in your organization.
IdeaSpace founders have experience co-developing products with corporations and can provide new avenues to create value for different business units.
