SMAU Paris 2026 | Interview with Orhiane Savarese, HEC Paris Incubateur

At SMAU Paris 2026 we interviewed Orhiane Savarese, Associate Director - Community Engagement, HEC Paris Incubateur. We asked her how do you make sure to create value for all members of the ecosystem and to give us a few tips on how to build a powerful ecosystem as a corporate: “The key thing to create value for the members of the ecosystem is to think about a virtuous circle. We need to make sure that you bring value to the founder first, because if you manage to attract the best startup, they will attract the best experts, the best investors within your ecosystem. And then you need to figure out what are the internal assets that you have that you should develop so that you can deliver value to startups. But for that, you also need to understand what those assets that you have have as an interest. For us as a business school, we needed to figure out how can we motivate our alumni community to be involved. They have different needs, which means different ways to involve them. This is key to understand. In order to build a very powerful ecosystem, the thing that you need to focus on is negotiation and leverage to the management leadership. What you need to understand is how can your initiative be spoken about with the words, the very words of the strategy of your organization. If you can tie very precisely your actions to the organization objectives, this is the first key. And then you're going to need the support of sponsors, but also operational teams. And it is really going to be a huge conversation with everyone involved”.