Incorporating innovation as the cornerstone of strategic management stands tall as a vital foundation for forward-thinking leadership and the unwavering endurance of an organization. Rolan Marco Garcia, the pioneering CEO and Managing Partner of Embiggen, steers businesses towards crafting and executing ingenious digital transformation blueprints. He guides them to establish the right procedures, structures, and technologies while fostering a culture of innovation that fuels long-lasting business metamorphosis.
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between World’s Leaders and Rolan Marco Garcia:
Describe who you are as a person, inside and outside of the workplace.
As you know, being an entrepreneur and startup founder is difficult and time-consuming. As much as I want to spend more time with my friends and family, it’s not always possible because of my crazy schedule. So I try to make time and spend as much time with my friends and family as possible. But time constraints only allow us to meet each other once a month, or maybe even every other month. I think this is one of the sides most people don’t see when they look at CEOs and other startup founders.
Describe your background, and what did you do before you started/joined the company?
Before I started Embiggen, I was in a completely different line of work. For my undergraduate degrees, I got a double degree in chemistry and biological engineering from the Mapua Institute of Technology. While I never got to practice those two degrees professionally, my experiences in those programs opened my eyes to the concept of innovation. I got fascinated by innovation and the tech side of things to the point where I wanted to join NASA and pursue aerospace engineering.
Right after I graduated college, I worked in Singapore for an insurtech startup as a risk capacity analyst. It was good, but I eventually got bored with it. Additionally, my boss wasn’t a great boss, which partly inspired me to become an entrepreneur. They pushed me to be my own boss.
So, I came back to the Philippines and joined the ADB for a short stint. After that, I set up a few startups in logistics, import-export, and beauty products but failed there. I tried to build a startup incubator, but I didn’t know how to monetize it. There were a couple more failures in between, and my debt reached PHP 5 million. That was not a good time in my life.
But I persevered and decided to give it one more shot. I looked back at what fascinated me during university: technology and innovation. And I took the difficult lessons I learned throughout my experience setting up multiple startups in various industries. These translated into the start of Embiggen, a corporate venture group that builds and invests in new digital ventures with trailblazing corporations.
Tell us about the inception of the company. How did it all start?
The idea of building a startup incubator or a venture builder was still at the forefront of my mind, despite my earlier failure. So I started asking around: (1) how do you monetize a startup incubator? and (2) can I sell this service to corporations?
To answer number 2, yes, corporations avail of this service from corporate venture builders. In fact, I lost one bid to build ventures for one of the largest Philippine-based conglomerates to the venture builder of one of the big 3 management consulting firms. This shows there is a market for it, especially since other larger firms are already doing it.
But to monetize it, I knew I had to get big names on board with Embiggen. These people needed to be big names in the corporate innovation space, with the track record to prove it. I found my three co-founders, two of whom helped build the Philippine startup ecosystem together with the government and a local conglomerate, and one of whom is a venture builder with international experience. We all first met at a rooftop restaurant in Manila, and the rest is history.
On that rooftop, we talked about the idea of building multiple startups at the same time for local and international conglomerates. This is the venture studio, or corporate venture building model, which we wanted Embiggen to use.
What has made you successful? What do you value?
I wouldn’t be here without the people I work with. Definitely, without my co-founders and the entire Embiggen team, Embiggen wouldn’t be here. No one can get anywhere without the hardworking people they work with and interact with. I am blessed to have a good team that helped me build Embiggen.
I want a better life for my family through entrepreneurship. As we realize Embiggen’s goals, I am slowly realizing this as well. It is a great motivator as I work to provide a brighter future for my future family together with my fiance and, of course, my team at Embiggen.
Which are the major services of the company and how do the company to get ahead in the competition? What value-added services does the company provide?
Embiggen has 4 major lines of service: corporate venture building, venture capital as a-service, innovation training, and corporate foresight.
Embiggen Digital Ventures is the group’s corporate venture building (CVB) arm. This is the company’s flagship service. Corporate venture building is a proven innovation strategy where a corporation builds a new business that will act as an innovation hub for the organization. Typically, newly built ventures create new revenue streams for an organization while operating independently of the core business. Newly built ventures also allow our clients to access untapped markets, cater to consumers’ unsolved problems, and diversify their offerings.
What are the most important aspects of a company’s culture? What principles do you believe in and how do you build this culture?
I value people who have an entrepreneurial spirit. They’re often the people who are the best at problem-solving, being relentless in their vision, and being courageous and bold in the way they do things. They’re not afraid to challenge the status quo. And at the core of Embiggen is being entrepreneurial as we innovate and build new ventures.
We also, as a company, value excellence. We’re up against big companies that have much more resources and brand recognition than us, and to compete with them, we need to be at par or even better. We’re doing okay now, but we can still do more to be the best at what we do. It’s always about trying to raise the bar in what we do.
What is the significance of innovative ideas in the company?
The best ideas always win. It’s not your rank or your designation. Whether you’re an intern or a CEO, the best idea always wins. And that’s what innovation is all about. You need to be able to think outside the box. If the best idea came from someone who’s not the head, then good. You can’t pull rank and shoot it down because your subordinate had a better idea.
What advice would you give someone going into a leadership position for the first time?
Leaders need to be humble enough to know that they can’t do it all. You have to be aware that you probably aren’t the best person in the company to do everything, and because of that, you need to learn to rely on other people who are most likely going to do better than you at a certain task. Just because you have the most credentials doesn’t mean you’re the best in the organization.
