The term “coming of age” refers to a child’s transition into adulthood. Rite of passage rituals are events that present such transitions in the form of a ceremony. For instance, the Mexican quinceañera celebrates a girl’s 15th birthday. The traditional quinceañera was a formal way of presenting one’s daughter to society. In her long white evening dress, the birthday girl danced and mingled at her party with the sole purpose of finding a suitor, someone who would admire her grown-up image for more than just one night.
In hopes of presenting Tijuana’s most attractive aspects, Tijuana Innovadora, a 10-day effort to revalidate the city’s people and innovative nature to the rest of the world, helped local companies showcase their attributes and aptitudes to locals and visitors. Bringing in high- profile speakers, such as Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak and TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie, the city received anecdotal lectures and insights about creative, alternative and genuine thinking and the importance of actualization. Tijuana Innovadora presented an often overlooked aspect of Tijuana: the creative side of its people. Event coordinators hoped the estimated 50,000 attendees from outside Mexico would invest in the city and its projects.
The event was held in Tijuana’s Centro Cultural, a cluster of adobe-colored buildings of diverse shapes: one sphere, two squares and a tall rectangle. The sphere is an IMAX theater and the squares house numerous history and art museums, as well as a traditional theater.
At one building called “El Cubo,” local companies set their individual templates to illustrate the innovative aspects of their businesses. On the last Saturday of Tijuana Innovadora, the green building company SEICA set up large illustrative boards detailing its initiatives in sustainable construction on a large grassy area. SEICA’s Vía Corporativo is one of Tijuana’s few LEED-certified buildings.
“It is a privilege to be in a place that is extremely clean and that has a culture of cultivating shared space which is in order,” Marketing Manager of SEICA Siham Núñes said.
Nuñes says SEICA also carries its ecological incentives to local schools by educating students in elementary schools about basic recycling and college students about sustainable construction. Topics of education and altruistic charitable giving summed up most of Tijuana Innovadora.
Attendees were captivated by Wozniak as the revolutionary computer engineer spoke about his history with Apple and co- worker Steve Jobs, and lectured on the importance of challenging the status quo about traditional education systems.
“I started to be so good at electronics. I became what people call a nerd or a geek,” Wozniak said. “Very often it is that outsider … they make up their own ideas because they don’t go by what other people think.”
It is the value given to creative thinking, that allowed both Wozniak and Mycoskie to believe in their respective inventiveness.
“You’ve got to believe in your ‘what ifs,’” Mycoskie told attendees.
Dressed in a denim button-down shirt tucked in mint-colored pants and sporting his very own red TOMS which he claims is the only style he wears, the altruistic businessman spoke of conscious capitalism and the joy of giving. “Giving is good for business, resume developing and branding,” Mycoskie said. “There is no need for advertisement because customers tell your story.”
Mycoskie began his espadrille empire after a trip he took to Argentina. Seeing poverty reflected in the bare, damaged and infected feet of the area’s less fortunate, he thought a “what if” idea that developed into a company that has given away 1 million pairs of shoes in 25 countries, including the U.S. His manner of business has not only helped those in need, but has also managed to convey his philanthropic spirit to others. Former Tijuana resident and Tijuana Innovadora attendee Veronica Hernández is on the verge of starting her very own regional good-deed business.
Having sold and pushed for the birth of recyclable bags in Tijuana in years past, she returned to her cause by forming a line of uniquely styled eco friendly bags. A percentage of revenue from the bags’ sales, she said, will go to educational purposes in Tijuana about environmentalism. Her company is called Be Love Projects.
“You provide much more with education,” Hernández said. “[Mycoskie] is part of that inspiration that tells me ‘you can do it.’”
Now that Tijuana has gotten a glimpse of what it takes to be successful in business and innovation, a new vision may have been implanted in the minds of the future leaders of this much maligned city.
