Cesar Castro is a Research Director at the Institute For The Future, working both with the Technology Horizons Team and the Health Horizons Team. His primary areas of research include open innovation, crowdsourcing, hybrid business models, and new models for online cooperative communities.

He has both large company and startup experience, and has spent most of his 23-year career working in the Chemicals, Life Sciences, and Consumer Products industries. Prior to joining the IFTF, he held the positions of Vice President of Marketing and Vice President of Sales for InnoCentive, Inc., a leading company in the area of Open Innovation. He led the growth of their customer base from 1 to over 50 of the most innovative Fortune 500 companies in the world. As a member of the management team, he helped the company successfully raise $9 million in Series A financing.

Prior to that, Mr. Castro was Global Business Director at ChemConnect, the leading business-to-business eCommerce company serving the chemicals and plastics industries. At ChemConnect, his responsibilities included global strategy, business development and marketing for the plastics vertical. Mr. Castro also served as director of sales and marketing at MBA Polymers, a start-up specializing in high technology plastics recycling. His previous experience includes nearly 10 years at Shell Chemical Company, where he held a variety of positions in R&D, sales and marketing, and manufacturing.

Mr. Castro holds a B.S. in chemistry from Loyola College in Maryland and an M.S. in polymer engineering from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

If you would like to connect with Cesar, please send him an email or call him at (650) 233-9563.