Alejandro Betancourt López Reveals Why Innovation Is Dead (And What Works Instead)

Silicon Valley loves to celebrate tech innovators—the entrepreneurs who create the next breakthrough app, revolutionary software, or cutting-edge gadget. But Alejandro Betancourt López believes the real wealth creation over the next decade won’t come from inventing new technologies. It will come from anticipating where value migrates within existing industries and positioning yourself there before everyone else realizes what’s happening.

This distinction between innovation and anticipation might seem subtle, but it represents fundamentally different approaches to building wealth. Tech innovators focus on creating products that solve problems or capture attention. Value chain anticipators focus on understanding how economic value moves between different parts of an industry over time, then positioning their investments to capture that value as it shifts.

“I have a good sense of knowing or perceiving what is going to be the next cycle of profitable businesses,” Alejandro Betancourt López explained when discussing his investment philosophy. “I have been lucky enough to be accurate in predicting where the profits are going to come from a different industry or when the shift of an industry to another cycle is going to be.”

The difference becomes clear when you look at his track record. Rather than inventing ride-sharing technology, he anticipated that transportation value would shift from vehicle ownership to access, then systematically acquired the licenses that would become valuable when that shift occurred. Rather than creating social media platforms, he recognized that fashion marketing would migrate from traditional advertising to social influence, then built Hawkers around that insight.

This approach has created extraordinary wealth precisely because it doesn’t depend on breakthrough innovation. Instead, it relies on understanding patterns that repeat across industries and time periods. The entrepreneurs who understand these shifts and position accordingly will capture disproportionate value, regardless of whether they invent any new technologies.

Learning from History’s Biggest Wealth Creators

Alejandro Betancourt López’s approach draws heavily on studying how value has migrated throughout business history. By understanding these patterns, he can identify similar transitions happening in contemporary markets before they become obvious to other investors.

His favorite example comes from the oil industry’s evolution over more than a century. “If you can talk about the oil industry, at the beginning, the refiners, when the Rockefellers were in the business, were the ones making the profit,” he explained. “Then oil became a scarcity, and then the value was in the producer of the oil more than the refineries.”

This shift didn’t happen overnight. When John D. Rockefeller built Standard Oil, refining was the bottleneck that controlled the entire industry. Oil was plentiful, but turning crude oil into usable products required expensive infrastructure and technical expertise. Whoever controlled the refineries captured most of the value in the chain.

But as oil became scarcer and more valuable, the economics shifted. Suddenly, finding and extracting oil became more profitable than refining it. The companies that owned the oil fields started capturing more value than those who simply processed the crude. Value had migrated from one part of the chain to another.

The pattern continued with transportation. “Then shipping, when war came in the ’40s, who had the means of transporting goods, of oil or food, and that’s Onassis made his fortune because he had all the ships and that was the most step in the chain that had more value,” Alejandro Betancourt López noted.

Aristotle Onassis became one of the world’s richest men not by discovering oil or inventing new refining technology, but by recognizing that during wartime, whoever controlled shipping would capture enormous value. He positioned himself there before the opportunity became obvious to everyone else.

“It’s the way you place yourself in any industry, that can capture that margin and create that value for yourself or for the investors,” Alejandro Betancourt López explained.

How This Works in Today’s Markets

Today’s markets offer clear examples of how Alejandro Betancourt López applies this value chain anticipation philosophy across his current investments. Rather than trying to invent new technologies, he focuses on positioning where value will migrate as existing industries transform.

The Hawkers success story exemplifies this approach perfectly. Instead of trying to invent better sunglasses or revolutionary eyewear technology, Alejandro Betancourt López recognized that value in fashion retail was migrating from traditional advertising and physical distribution toward direct customer relationships and social media influence.

He positioned Hawkers to capture this shift, growing the company to over 4.5 million pairs sold globally. The strategy worked because he anticipated where the industry was heading rather than trying to create entirely new products.

“It’s just to anticipate yourself where the market is going to move and the value in the chain is going to be,” he explained. This anticipation enabled Hawkers to build competitive advantages in social media marketing and direct-to-consumer sales that would be nearly impossible for traditional eyewear companies to replicate.

The energy sector provides another clear example. Rather than investing in breakthrough energy technologies, Alejandro Betancourt López has consistently focused on the infrastructure that enables energy transitions. Whether building power generation capacity during crisis periods or positioning in transportation licenses before mobility markets shifted, his approach captures value from industry transformations regardless of which specific technologies succeed.

The financial services investments follow the same pattern. Through BDK Financial Group and Banque de Dakar, he’s not trying to invent new financial technologies. Instead, he’s positioned to capture value as financial services migrate toward embedded applications and cross-border digital payments become mainstream.

The Orchestra Director Approach

“I consider myself a very fast learner, and that’s why I call myself, I could be a good director for orchestra because I know how to play a little bit of every instrument, and that’s key for success,” Alejandro Betancourt López noted. This orchestral approach—understanding how different parts of business ecosystems work together—enables him to spot value migrations that specialized investors might miss.

The key insight is that value chain anticipation doesn’t require deep technical expertise in any single area. It requires understanding business fundamentals and economic forces that push value toward different parts of industry chains over time. This approach works across industries because the underlying patterns remain consistent even as technologies change.

Looking ahead, massive value migrations are occurring simultaneously across multiple industries. Energy markets are shifting toward electricity and storage. Financial services are moving toward embedded applications. Retail is transforming around direct customer relationships rather than physical distribution.

The entrepreneurs who understand these shifts and position accordingly will capture disproportionate value, regardless of whether they invent breakthrough technologies. For Alejandro Betancourt López, this represents exactly the type of opportunity that has driven his success across multiple industries.

By focusing on anticipation rather than innovation, he’s built a portfolio that benefits from industry transformations while maintaining more predictable risk profiles than pure technology investing. It’s a strategy that has worked across energy, fashion, transportation, and finance—and one that will likely continue creating wealth as new value migrations emerge across the global economy.