Over 600 people from across the country gathered June 26th through the 28th at Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska to attend the first ever Inside/Outside Innovation Summit, a conference that matches startups with corporate innovators. The event showcased a diverse slate of speakers, a startup showcase floor, networking, and a $100,000 startup pitch competition.
“It’s a tough vision to pull off when you think about pulling together these different audiences with very different value propositions and creating a space where both could benefit,” said event organizer and Co-Founder of Econic, Brian Ardinger. “We gave the ties and the unties, the tucked and the untucked an opportunity to connect and learn from each other.”
The conference follows a recent trend in the corporate world toward innovation departments and forming relationships with the startup world. The theme of the event was matching startups with corporate innovators to find win/win partnerships.
“What was impressive to me was that the sponsors really doubled down on the purpose of the event,” said Ardinger. “Many took full advantage of the matchmaking environment and sought out startups to meet with.”
Speakers from both corporate and startup backgrounds spoke from two stages addressing a wide range of topics including funding, team structure, matchmaking, creating innovation environments, and more.
“From the content perspective, the feedback was that there were “over the top” great speakers in terms of knowledge and expertise,” said Ardinger. “The speakers that came together really understood that they had to speak to both audiences and they delivered on that.”
Another unique feature of the summit was a startup showcase featuring over 64 startups from around the country. Each startup had a booth where anyone could walk by and learn more about their business.
“The startup showcase was an idea that we felt was missing in the ecosystem, an opportunity for startups to really demonstrate what they are doing and why,” said Ardinger. “We had startups from Australia, Ireland, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Pitssburg, Austin, KC, St….