Victor Mulas on Building Global Innovation Ecosystems

In this episode of the AlchemistX Innovators Inside Podcast, Ian Bergman sits down with Victor Mulas, the first Chief Innovation Officer at Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), to unpack a 20-year journey that stretches from telecom deregulation in Europe to shaping startup hubs on three continents. Victor reveals the Panini Effect—his practical framework for sandwiching top-down vision with grassroots momentum—to push bold ideas through even the most risk-averse organizations.

Key takeaways include:

• Activate the Glue. Why vibrant “networking assets” (events, mentors, super-connectors) are the real catalyst that binds university talent, capital, and policy into a living ecosystem.
  

• Incentives Over Talk. How Victor aligns systems and rewards so innovation isn’t just a slogan from the C-suite but a career accelerator for project managers on the ground.
  

• From Pilot to Platform. Lessons from scaling CIC’s community model from Cambridge to Tokyo—and how any company can globalize a proven playbook without losing local soul.
  

• The Sandwich vs. The Panini. Tactics for pressing resistance out of large institutions, drawn from Victor’s decade steering billion-dollar World Bank programs.
  

Whether you’re a corporate intrapreneur wrestling with red tape or a government leader designing the next startup cluster, Victor’s stories deliver a punchy, field-tested roadmap for turning bureaucracy into breakthroughs.

For more episodes and resources, visit https://www.alchemistaccelerator.com/podcasts.