As Peter Thiel, one of the world's most successful startup investors, once said: "new technologies tend to emerge through new businesses."
It is very difficult to create new things within traditional companies, largely due to their bureaucratic hierarchical structures and their customary aversion to risk.
According to the founder of PayPal and one of the first investors in Facebook, in a conventional economy company, appearing to be doing work is often a more effective career advancement strategy than actually working and delivering results.
Indeed, we know that many of the companies changing the world and revolutionizing markets are (or were) startups: newly born businesses that emerge from a problem and a hypothesis about how to solve it, made up of a small team of dreamers willing to build the future.
These companies are, by definition, agile and easily adapt to new circumstances. They develop their product and value proposition together with the society they seek to transform. And this entire context gives startups a clear advantage in their capacity to innovate.
However, this does not mean there is no room for innovation in traditional markets. In fact, more and more large corporations are drawing closer to startups and implementing their management methods and culture to bring exponential performance gains to their organizations.
One company that achieved great success in innovating within a traditional structure was Banco Intermedium, which rode the wave of banking digitalization.
The bank, founded two decades ago, rebranded as Banco Inter, created a platform capable of executing all retail banking operations online, and transformed itself into a fully digital bank.
Just one year after its initial public offering (IPO) on the stock exchange, Banco Inter shares appreciated by more than 510 percent.
Magazine Luiza, a traditional Brazilian retail company, sought further growth through technology.
Under the new leadership of Frederico Trajano, the company created Luiza Labs, a division for developing new solutions where nothing passes through the usual bureaucratic processes.
There, new projects are developed, prototyped, and tested at an accelerated pace. Luiza Labs is responsible for creating the company's applications, which play a central role in its new omnichannel strategy.
In addition to the new applications and platforms, which already generate a significant portion of the company's traffic, Magazine Luiza also underwent a store digitalization process, creating systems and applications for sales and inventory management.
These new solutions made the stores more agile and efficient, resulting in greater operational efficiency and a better customer experience.
The outcome of this entire process became well known: the retailer's shares appreciated by more than 350 times!
In the food industry — another segment historically resistant to major innovation — the Mexican food franchise chain Oak's Burritos stands as an example: it innovated by introducing a set of tools, models, and processes that transformed the company into an agile and scalable business. By applying typical startup processes to its management, it has given the franchisor the character of a startup.
Through the use of software and process automation, Oak's managed to reduce the need for human support in its operations.
A practical example is the system that executes the entire financial and accounting process digitally and automatically, making it possible to manage up to 30 units with just one person in the administrative department.
In addition, the entrepreneurs developed a Partnership model to sustain growth. Instead of seeking traditional franchisees — who typically invest their capital and operate the store according to manuals — Oak's built into its culture the opportunity for store employees to become franchisees of the brand.
Through performance, productivity, and cultural alignment assessments, the operational team produces excellent franchisee-operators who ultimately achieve a quality far superior to that of regular franchise operators, as they already have a comprehensive understanding of how the store works and have been trained within the Oak's culture.
Oak's therefore found a new way to generate revenue: not through traditional royalties on turnover, but rather through a greater share of each store's profitability, in addition to the financial gains obtained by lending capital to the franchisee-operator when opening a new unit.
This blend of technological innovation with burritos, tacos, and nachos has produced remarkable results: the company's revenue has grown at an average of 45 percent per year since 2015.
The latest news is that Oak's has opened a new fundraising round on CapTable, StartSe's startup investment platform!
Participation is open to any investor, and the investment process is straightforward, conducted entirely online. Within the first 24 hours, 25 percent of the offering had already been raised.
Access the link below to learn more about the company, the fundraising offer, and the risks associated with the investment.
What do the most innovative companies have in common?
We can say that a company that has innovation as its core business is always thinking about the customer. This means constantly thinking and rethinking ways to serve better, to anticipate customers' wants and desires, and above all, to deliver value.
A company that seeks to deliver value is always in motion, and we might even venture to say that it is not afraid to disrupt its own business in the name of innovation.
Innovative companies carry out this process throughout their entire lifespan and will therefore never have just one or two projects. Innovation is their reason for being. Only in this way will they manage to remain in the market, avoiding or postponing their decline phase.
We know that a culture of innovation is not something that can be implemented overnight. It is a process that demands time, dedication, and commitment from everyone involved — but one that is ultimately worthwhile, as the benefits gained outweigh all of that.