LIMA, PERU – On September 6, the Global Innovation Forum participated in two events on digital trade in Lima during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) small business week in Peru.
As part of APEC’s SME Working Group Week, GIF Executive Director Jake Colvin presented at a workshop co-hosted by Google and the Government of Peru on policies to foster the development of digital SMEs. He spoke to the workshop’s audience about the importance of digital trade policy on small business development and economic growth and how regional and global integration improves local economies.
GIF Deputy Director Kaveri Marathe also moderated an event on online-to-offline (O2O) innovation, co-hosted by Chinese Taipei and the Philippines.
The O2O forum featured a panel of experts on unleashing innovation to improve global connectivity, including Sofia del Sante, Director of Impact & Networks for Startup Chile, Gary Urteaga, co-founder of CinePapaya – one of the startups featured in GIF’s recent report The New Faces of Transpacific Trade, Fernando D’Alessio, co-founder and CEO of Juntoz.com, and Mr. Larto, Chairman of the Indonesian Cooperative Managers Association.
Colvin moderated a session that highlighted the importance of bringing online the roughly 95 percent of small businesses that are currently offline and encouraging online services to make themselves available to a wider swathe of offline consumers.
Colvin said, “Startups and small businesses are uniquely positioned to capitalize on the opportunity to bridge the divide between online and offline consumers and expand their markets across borders.”
The event also held a startup pitch-style presentation with 14 innovative startups from across 10 APEC economies. Two startups, Triip.me of Vietnam (also featured in “The New Faces of Transpacific Trade”) and Medifi of the Philippines were awarded a trip to Chinese Taipei for next year’s annual O2O forum for successfully employing online tools to drive offline consumer traffic.
For more information contact: Kaveri Marathe, Deputy Director, Global Innovation Forum, Tel: (202) 464 2035, kaveri@globalinnovationforum.com
ABOUT THE GLOBAL INNOVATION FORUM
The Global Innovation Forum is a nonprofit startup that connects entrepreneur, small business, development, and university communities with policymakers and select corporations to explore the opportunities and challenges of engaging in the global marketplace. GIF serves as a hub for startup, university and development communities around the world to communicate with officials and corporations, discover public and private resources to help them succeed, and improve the public policy landscape to enable global innovation. GIF is a project of the 501(c)(3) National Foreign Trade Council Foundation.
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- From L to R: Mr. Gonzalo Villarán (Ministry of Production, Peru), Ms. Mei-Hsueh Lin (SME Administration, Chinese Taipei), Mr. Jerry Clavesillas (Department of Trade and Industry, The Philippines)
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- Startups Triip.me and Medifi won a ticket to next year’s O2O summit.
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- All of the panelists and presenters from the day’s event.