Innovation is a must for every company. But not every opportunity can be pursued, and wrong choices can be costly, they may result in lost market share, or in sunk R&D investments – or worse.
What if more innovation projects could be pursued without adding more resources? What if the pace of innovation could be sped up without adding cost?
Collaboration with startup companies facilitate just that: Such projects are fast, flexible, light on costs, with a “go get it” culture. Cooperation between established companies and startups is becoming more commonplace, and the first best practices emerge.
In-house corporate innovation is often costly, slow, and in many cases only delivers incremental improvements. Startup companies on the other hand create products fast, at low cost, and with fewer negative consequences in case of failure. Teams can now be rapidly formed around promising or radical business ideas. As a result, an increasing number of innovations are created outside of the corporate environment, e.g. in cooperation with startups.
However, startups often lack the required market access and know-how in order to become successful, as well as the experience, resources and financial means to develop their first solution into a full product portfolio. Interestingly, these two competences are precisely what established companies excel at!
We should, therefore, connect more established companies with more startups.
As a result, the speed of corporate innovation will increase, more startups will succeed – and both will win by combining the best of both worlds.