Vivaldi hires Mauricio Andujar to grow Latin America footprint

Mauricio Andujar, a business designer and transformation expert, has joined business and brand transformation firm Vivaldi as a partner.

Andujar is based in Lima, Peru, where he will lead Vivaldi’s digital team, leveraging his experience working with clients, thought leaders and talent around the world.

His focus will be on bringing strategy to life through service, product, and new venture design, while bringing an end-to-end approach with one partner throughout the process, where strategy and implementation are under one roof.

Andujar will also be responsible for building Vivaldi’s Latin America talent to the firm’s global talent pool, across capabilities including User Experience Design, User Interface Design, Product and Service Designers, Front and Back End Developers, Data Analytics.

Prior to joining Vivaldi, Andujar co-founded and led the growth of Liquid, that worked with leading corporations on (digital) innovation. He was also responsible for designing, launching, and scaling Liquid’s Venture Studio, specializing in incubating and accelerating early-stage startups in Peru and across Latin America.

Andujar will apply his extensive expertise in open innovation, digital products, services and ventures, to help clients build strong brands, drive exponential growth, transform the fortune of companies, and reimagine new business models.

On his new role, he said: “Vivaldi has been an agile leader in growth strategy and innovation for over two decades, and ambidexterity is needed now more than ever. Organizations that are able to effectively tackle fast-paced digital strategies as part of the core business strategy, while pursuing other opportunities and rethinking their business model, will be the ones that thrive in this era of digital disruption.”

“I am very excited to deepen Vivaldi’s current service offerings, bring brand and business strategies to life, work with top notch talent across the globe, and launch new services, products and ventures that contribute to a more humanized world.”

Erich Joachimsthaler, CEO of Vivaldi added: “Every company needs to reimagine how it creates value. I firmly believe that those that create a competitive edge through fostering shared value for brands, society, customers and even their competitors will grow and win, and those that extract more value than they create will cease to exist. There is a huge opportunity for companies to re-envision themselves in this new world.”

“We are thrilled to welcome Mauricio, who shares that vision and will focus his efforts on increasing Vivaldi’s value to clients and partners through deployment of new cutting-edge, digital solutions designed to exponentially increase scalability of business objectives and drive revenue.”

Trends shaping the innovation landscape

According to Andujar, some of the biggest trends and challenges facing businesses today include:

Venture capital investment is growing at a tremendous rate. As a result, “traditional” companies are competing with new and upcoming startups (and venture capital money). In Latin America, Nu Bank is an excellent example, reaching its IPO in 5 years and becoming the most valued bank in the region.

Health & wellness. What we eat, mental wellness, work/life balance, the transformation of the healthcare industry and the new products and services around wellness. It’s impressive how many habits have changed around the way we take care of ourselves, the pandemic has dramatically accelerated this.

Remote work is here to stay. Although not the same thing as “home office”, organizations that master working remotely with global and diverse teams will truly develop a competitive advantage.

Purpose driven organizations. Organizations that operate with an ample but specific winning aspiration will be more attractive to the best talent (especially new generations) in the world as well as give space for disruptive innovation to happen.

Open innovation and ecosystem building are key to discovering and amplifying growth domains. All companies and organizations must look beyond their own talent and capabilities and explore new ways to co-create new options for the future. If we believe we are the center of the universe and we can create everything we need to succeed on our own, we are doomed for failure.

New technologies such as AI and machine learning are no longer “new”, these technologies are transforming how companies generate value, create high growth and scalable solutions. Not all companies can and should create disruptive technology, but all companies should understand how these can bring about new value to their current and future business models.