Learnings from the third edition of the Boston Seminar organized by Lead to Change.

During the first week of February 2025 we participated in the Boston Seminar “Strategy, Growth & Innovation” organized by Lead to Change, a consultancy chaired by Xavier Marcet. In this new edition, INDPULS participated for the third consecutive year and, in addition, we were able to invite entrepreneurs from the two startups awarded by the Startup Support Program: Víctor J. Calvo, CEO of Muutech, and Jorge García CTO of Pack2Earth. For them, it was a very enriching experience and a great opportunity to get to know the Boston ecosystem, attend conferences on strategy and innovation with top-level speakers and present their deep-tech companies.

Now, once all these experiences have been shared, we share with you some of the conclusions resulting from this experience:

The technologies that will define the future of our companies and quantum computing, with Jordi Albó and Parfait Atchadé.

Jordi Albó, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Lighthouse DIG, spoke to us about the opportunities of Artificial Intelligence to help us increase human capabilities, but he also reminded us of the risks it entails and the importance of being careful to avoid biased results.
He also spoke to us about the existence of a new paradigm in terms of big data in which, from generative AI and a small set of data, we can generate synthetic data that, through the human correction factor, helps us generate a necessary volume of quality data.

Parfait Atchadé, Director of Strategy at Lighthouse DIG, spoke to us about the need for deep learning and quantum computing as vehicles to respond to different challenges related to energy efficiency, security and encryption, the limitations of Moore’s Law and operating with complex mathematical models.

The University-Company relationship at MIT, with Eduardo Garrido.

During the seminar in Boston we were able to visit the campuses of two legendary universities, of the 52 universities in the city: Harvard Business School (HBS) and the Harvard University Campus and the MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology Campus, which are the universities that accumulate the greatest number of patents and associated startups. Eduardo Garrido, Director of Programs at MIT’s ILP, explained to us that MIT’s enormous ecosystem stands out for being a driving force for entrepreneurship with more than 30,000 active companies founded by its alumni and, as ILP helps companies to approach the different centers that make up the university itself.

Culture and performance, with Gerard Brossard and Jay Rao.

We talked about the importance of corporate culture with Gerard Brossard, CEO of Denison Consulting, and the relationship with the success of the company itself. A good indicator of the future performance of a company is its culture since it is the way to project the transformation process and set the objectives that are to be achieved. We are left with his phrase “Culture is the operating System of the company”. Also, with his resounding statement that if the company does not have the right processes it will not be able to innovate.

Jay Rao, professor of the Executive Education programs at Babson College, spoke to us about culture and innovation and how to develop entrepreneurial leaders within the organization. He highlighted 3 skills: the ability to take risks (70%), to know how to navigate uncertainty (20%) and to explore ambiguity (10%). He also spoke about the importance of the income statement around the two great pillars of an organization’s culture, on the one hand the business model (people, resources, projects, processes, objectives, products, customers, cash…) which he calls “Hardware”, and how it attracts new talent (vision, values, behaviors, climate…), the “Software”.

Innovation in organizations, with Paula Carsí and Luís Pérez Breva.

Paula Carsí, Manufacturing Transformation and Innovation Manager at Ford Alliance (Europe, Asia and Africa), shared with us the purpose of her manufacturing department and innovation model, which aims to be the most competitive manufacturing process through innovative solutions, people with a creative mindset, with the necessary skills and attitude and, bringing global value to the organization. Currently, she is already replicating this model to other plants in Europe and international markets, building bridges and respecting the strengths of each unit.

Luis Pérez Breva, Director of MIT Innovation Teams, spoke to us about the different innovation models and the complexity when implementing them in organizations: “The real challenge is not to have many ideas but to survive all the bad ideas that we will have”. There are countless technologies available to be used that can provide answers to major challenges, the problem is that they are incomprehensible and we do not have them well indexed by application.

Strategy in relation to transformation and growth, with Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, Pedro Pons and Xavier Marcet.

Ramon Casadesus-Masanell, director of the Strategy Department at HBS, through the case method made us reflect on the strategy of the value provided to the customer as a competitive business advantage. This value created is the distance between the cost and what the customer is willing to pay. We cannot be excellent at everything, therefore, we must focus on what is most relevant to our customer.

Pedro Pons, Senior Vice President of Finance and Corporate Controller at Estée Lauder, also added patience, agility and humility as key elements to grow and face international expansion.

The closing session of the seminar was given by Xavier Marcet, President of Lead to Change, placing people and thinking at the center of the growth strategy: “Making things happen, and making them happen with meaning, reaching another level and doing it with people.”