Schneider Electric established SE Ventures in 2018 to invest and partner with startups and incubate new businesses to gain deep insights into quickly moving markets and build the future growth engines for the company. During this session, Heriberto Diarte will share best practices on setting up a corporate venture capital practice, the importance of partnering with portfolio companies, and how to bring the external learnings back to the organization to drive meaningful innovation.

Heriberto is responsible for Corporate Ventures and External Innovation at Schneider Electric. He is responsible for Schneider-Electric’s open innovation and incubation programs, and its investments in start-up and growth companies. Heri brings a breadth of experience to this role as he is an Global Business Leader with extensive experience running large companies, being a high-tech entrepreneur, and an angel investor. He has a track record of delivering above market performance, proficiency at opening new markets, gaining market share in existing ones, and optimizing a global supply chain accordingly. He has managed many geographic regions in world-class multinationals, a global automotive company, lived in 9 countries on 3 continents and speaks three languages. Heriberto’s career started in an NGO managing unpaid volunteers, which taught him the leadership skills of how to create an environment providing intrinsic motivation to create high-performing teams. He has experience in 6 different industries from Building Materials, to Transportation, Infrastructure, Automotive, IoT, and Energy that has only enhanced his ability to develop a keen sense of understanding the winning strategy and right action plans to take. Heriberto is a graduate of Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a Mexican and French National and enjoys skiing, singing and scuba diving.