A private peer dinner for corporate innovation managers held on 16 June 2026 in Paris, organised by Ambivation with Pexus Ventures on the eve of VivaTech. It gathers innovation leaders from established companies to share challenges and best practices in an informal setting.
Innovation Manager Dinner is a private dinner most recently held on 16 June 2026 from 20:00 to 22:00 in Paris, organised by Ambivation with the support of Pexus Ventures, on the eve of VivaTech's business programme. Ambivation is a Berlin-based open-innovation and startup-scouting firm; Pexus Ventures is a Frankfurt-based venture-client consultancy. The dinner is designed for innovation managers and innovation leaders from established companies to network and exchange best practices, and sits within the wider VivaTech Side Events circuit tracked by Events Index.
The dinner was a peer gathering where innovation leaders shared challenges, insights and best practices in a relaxed setting the evening before VivaTech's business days opened. Attendance was by registration, with each guest covering their own dinner cost, and spots were limited. The exact location was shared only after registration, a common pattern across the more intimate formats on the VivaTech Side Events circuit. As of this verification on 4 July 2026, no attendance figure, guest count, or capacity number has been publicly disclosed by either organiser for the 2026 edition; Ambivation's own listing describes the format only as "limited spots," without a number attached.
Not as of this verification. VivaTech's 2027 edition is dated 16 to 19 June 2027 at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, but Ambivation has not published a 2027 instance of the Innovation Manager Dinner as of 4 July 2026. The organiser's most recent public reference to the dinner remains the 16 June 2026 edition, covered in Ambivation's own VivaTech 2026 agenda post. Readers planning ahead should treat the dinner as an annual fixture of the VivaTech week in practice, pending Ambivation's own 2027 announcement, rather than assume a confirmed date.
The 2026 dinner ran on 16 June, the eve of VivaTech's business programme, among the curated peer formats of the week described in the VivaTech Side Events overview. Its focus on corporate innovation managers gives it a distinct audience from the investor-led dinners that cluster on the Wednesday of VivaTech week, such as the Venture Client Summit: VivaTech Edition, which draws roughly 140 C-level and innovation leaders to a half-day format at Parisante Campus. Where that summit runs as a structured, panel-based programme, the Innovation Manager Dinner keeps to an unstructured peer-exchange format with no published agenda, positioning it closer to the founder-facing morning formats such as the VivaTech Founders Breakfast in spirit, though its audience is corporate buyers rather than founders raising capital.
No formal speaker programme is published for the dinner. Unlike panel-format side events on the same circuit, there is no stage, no moderator, and no published running order; the value proposition is the room itself rather than any content delivered in it.
It is a side event during VivaTech week, on the eve of the show's business days, organised by Ambivation with Pexus Ventures. It is independent of VivaTech ticketing and appears on the VivaTech Side Events index alongside more than forty other formats that fill the week.
Innovation managers and innovation leaders from established companies, plus business developers and open-innovation practitioners. It is not aimed at the investor or founder-facing audiences that fill the Venture Client Summit or the VC-focused evenings of the same week.
It is not designed for: startup founders seeking investors, since the audience is corporate innovation managers; the general public, given the curated peer setting; attendees expecting a hosted free dinner, since each guest covers their own cost; and late registrants, since spots are limited.
Ambivation's public materials document the 16 June 2026 edition as the dinner's most recent instance; no prior-year edition (2025 or earlier) is documented in the organiser's currently available pages as of this verification, and no attendance history across multiple years is publicly disclosed.
The dinner is held at a Paris location shared with registered guests, rather than published in advance. The setting suits a small peer dinner rather than a large-format reception, consistent with the format's emphasis on exchange over spectacle.
Ambivation is a Berlin-based open-innovation and startup-matchmaking firm founded in 2016, describing its mission as empowering innovation managers, business developers and community builders through systematic startup scouting and tailored innovation matchmaking. Pexus Ventures is a Frankfurt-based venture-client consultancy supporting the event; its own materials describe a venture-clienting approach in which corporates buy, use and adopt startup technologies directly rather than through equity investment. The pairing reflects a German open-innovation and venture-client focus brought to the VivaTech week, alongside Ambivation's own guided startup tours inside the show.
Questions about the dinner are handled directly by Quentin Normand, who works as an Innovation Manager and Open Innovation Specialist at Ambivation and is named as the point of contact for the dinner, the Startup Matchmaking programme, and Ambivation's Startup Tours, reachable at contact@ambivation.com or +49 30 120 64 721. No additional sponsors or partner organisations beyond Ambivation and Pexus Ventures are named in connection with the dinner as of this verification.
No press coverage attributable to a named outlet has been found for the Innovation Manager Dinner as of this verification, despite targeted searches for recaps, reviews and outlet-specific reporting. This is consistent with the event's format: an intimate, own-cost peer dinner with a capped, registration-gated guest list and no published programme gives outlets little to report on beyond the fact of the gathering itself, unlike marquee VivaTech week fixtures that draw hundreds of guests and public figures. The dinner's only public documentation remains Ambivation's own agenda posts describing the format ahead of VivaTech 2026; no third-party press, trade outlet, or blog coverage of the dinner itself has surfaced independently.
A peer dinner for corporate innovation leaders, where the people who buy from startups compare notes the night before VivaTech opens.
Registration is handled through a Microsoft Forms link, with each guest covering their own dinner cost. Spots are limited and the location is shared after registration. Questions ahead of registering can be directed to Quentin Normand at Ambivation (contact@ambivation.com, +49 30 120 64 721). No early-bird or tiered pricing structure applies, since the format is own-cost rather than ticketed by the organiser.
Register through the published Microsoft Forms link; spots are limited and the location is shared after registration.
The most recent edition ran on 16 June 2026, from 20:00 to 22:00, at a Paris location shared with registered guests. A 2027 date has not yet been announced.
A private peer dinner among corporate innovation leaders, on an own-cost basis, focused on exchange rather than a programme. There is no stage, no speaker list, and no published agenda; the format is conversation among peers.
Quentin Normand, Innovation Manager and Open Innovation Specialist at Ambivation, is the named point of contact for the dinner, reachable at contact@ambivation.com or +49 30 120 64 721.
Yes. It is one of more than forty side events mapped on the VivaTech Side Events index, sitting in the founder-and-operator-morning family alongside the Venture Client Summit: VivaTech Edition and the VivaTech Founders Breakfast, though its own format is an evening dinner rather than a morning session.
| Registration (Microsoft Forms) | https://forms.office.com/e/kEaKs84fh8 |
| Ambivation | https://ambivation.com/ |
| Ambivation VivaTech 2026 agenda post | https://ambivation.com/2026/05/05/vivatech-2026-what-to-add-to-your-agenda/ |
| Pexus Ventures | https://www.pexus-ventures.com/ |
| Parent event: VivaTech | https://eventsindex.org/events/viva-technology.html |
| VivaTech Side Events (sector index) | https://eventsindex.org/vivatech-side-events.html |
| Related: Venture Client Summit VivaTech Edition | https://eventsindex.org/events/venture-client-summit-vivatech.html |
| Related: VivaTech Founders Breakfast | https://eventsindex.org/events/vivatech-founders-breakfast.html |
| Upcoming EMEA events (Events Index) | https://eventsindex.org/upcoming.html |