23. Ram Jambunathan, SAP.iO - Building a Corporate Innovation Platform

Ram has deep experience on both sides of the tech startup and incumbent table, and he brings that experience to help drive SAP’s current SAP.iO corporate innovation platform efforts. We discuss why when SAP kicked off SAP.io in 2016 it all started and ended with thinking about how to drive value to their customers, how SAP.iO has become a gold standard in corporate innovation via activating multiple levers internally and externally (internal corporate venture investing through SAP.iO Fund, SAP.iO Foundries accelerators, SAP.iO Venture Studio efforts, and external venture investment partnership with Sapphire Partners), how his team is leveraging a confluence of innovation trends (open source, API, Ai/ML, platformization) to both support customers on their digitization journeys and drive strategic value and interesting insights back to SAP across different industries and lines of business, and why its critical to take an open ecosystem and platform approach where curated partnerships can flourish with integrations connecting customers and startups.