Alvaro Duarte is Vice President of R&D at King, the mobile game company behind the Candy Crush series. His team is driving King’s innovation efforts with one of the largest, dedicated mobile games Research and Innovation Lab in the industry.
Alvaro did his undergraduate studies at Mines-Télécom in Paris, received his MBA from the Asian Institute of Technology and attended executive training in Dartmouth, MIT and Stanford. During his decade in Asia, he managed companies in the FMCG sector for Mars Masterfoods before joining Gameloft where he went on to lead three video game production studios with over 400 employees across Korea, Japan and New Zealand.
For the last 7 years, Alvaro has led King’s Barcelona studio, which he helped grow from 60 people in 2012 to over 600 today. He also lectures on innovation at IESE Business School.
Event role
Case study speaker
Case study
'Driving innovation through player-centric, diverse and inclusive teams'
Something important happened when King’s Candy Crush game went viral. Sure, it was a huge deal for the then start-up and its handful of loyal employees, but the impact was much deeper. Suddenly, a new part of the population was ‘gaming' every day thanks to the mobile gaming ‘console' they carried in their pockets. And this influx of new players meant that an industry where game makers had shared interests with game players, was fundamentally changed.
In this case talk, Alvaro will give practical advice on how any company can increase and scale its innovation efforts by applying the lessons he has learned while championing innovation in mobile casual games, the mass-market genre that Candy Crush helped create. Alvaro will detail how building a culture of player-centricity, combined with a diverse team that works in an inclusive atmosphere, creates an internal climate needed to drive external innovation, and how this has been the secret sauce behind King’s continued industry leadership.
Scheduled
Friday, September 11, 12:30 - 13:15
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