Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the current practices in “corporate-startup collaboration” and “Open Innovation” (OI) in Europe. OI has increasingly become mainstream. A growing number of European corporates are adopting OI approaches to innovate and benefit from a more agile business environment. As Henry Chesbrough – the father of OI – finds out, there is “no single best model for engagement”. It highly depends on the goals that companies want to achieve. Models and approaches of corporate-startup collaboration are continuously evolving. A study of the variety of their effective-implementations in a real business context is therefore beneficial.

For the purpose of this research, the authors analyzed the European corporates that are considered as “innovation leaders” according to “SEP Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars” annual ranking. According to experts’ evaluations, these companies represent the most advanced case studies in open innovation. The paper analyses the experience of 31 European large corporates implementing effective corporate-startup collaboration. The research approach is exploratory and descriptive.

By adopting a practitioner-oriented perspective, the authors contribute to shed new light on how European corporates adopt OI and internalize arising innovations across organizational boundaries. Six key areas of OI activities have been identified and compared based on required resources’ commitment. Nearly all of the corporates have implemented low-commitment strategies such as organizing one-off startup events and/or sharing free resources with startups. By contrast, only a limited number of corporates engaged actively through acquisitions (M&A), which requires the highest level of commitment. Startup procurement and investments seem to be the most effective approaches to startup-corporate collaboration, while corporate accelerators and innovation outposts are adopted by only nearly half of the companies considered.

Although the research is not a comprehensive survey, it is useful to identify current and future trends of successful corporate-startup collaboration as well as best practices by European leading companies working at the forefront of OI.

This study provides evidence of the main trends in corporate-startup collaborations, both opening up their innovation processes for mutual benefits. The results have important implications both for corporates and policy makers since the study also highlights the main barriers that hinder successful corporate-startup collaborations. Although many of the analyzed corporates report to have introduced “startup-friendly procedures” – including shortening payments times, simplification of vendor registration and qualification process – the vast majority of companies still need to be educated about the opportunities and benefits arising from Open Innovation (OI). This is particularly true for mid-size companies and small and medium-sized companies that based on some preliminary evidences have not yet fully engaged in open innovation due to limited resources and lack of ability to understand the disruption threats posed by recent technology and market evolution.

To date, there is little evidence on current practices of “Open Innovation” and “corporate-startup collaboration” in Europe. Only recently, large European corporations have concretely started to engage with startups. This paper attempts to shed new light on this so-far under-explored issue.

Established companies often engage with startups as a way to improve their innovation performance. While there has been extensive discussion on the reasons, modes, and expected outcomes of these initiatives, there is still a need to understand more about how corporate engagements with startups (CEwS) evolve and how they can enhance a company’s innovation capability. This study proposes a framework of engagement strategies, discussing their purposes and implications to understand the subject better.

This study involved managers from twelve large, established companies across various sectors. The authors used a multicase approach to analyze their experiences and offer a framework for corporate-startup engagement.

The framework for corporate-startup engagement consists of four main strategies: (1) innovative improvement, (2) R&D expansion, (3) more value to corporate venture capital and (4) ecosystem articulation. The authors found that ecosystem articulation, which combines the potentials of the other three strategies, is the most sophisticated approach.

This study offers a systematic view of the CEwS phenomenon, identifying the various modes of engagement, the reasons for adopting each one and potential ways to advance and improve them. For managers, the study reveals the CEwS as a lever to build innovation capabilities over time.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of literature on corporate engagement with start-ups (CEWS) by identifying the modes, contexts, antecedents, barriers and outcomes. As an emerging field, CEWS presently has no such review available which will help in building consensus within the field and shape future research directions.

The study followed a two-phased systematic review of literature. Three research databases (i.e. Web of Science, ScienceDirect and SCOPUS) were accessed to gather and conduct the review. Of the total 379 papers retrieved, 63 total relevant papers were studied and analysed. The exhaustive review of literature helped to uncover the contexts, perspectives, antecedents, outcomes and barriers reported across the different modes of CEWS.

The study highlighted the five prominent modes of CEWS favoured by large corporations and start-ups. It found that the large corporations and start-ups associate with one another on the basis of complementarities of activities, resources and motives to pursue their strategic orientations. The engagements also face barriers on the ground, such as incompatibility of goals, power imbalances, cultural differences and weak engagement plans. Most important contexts seen were the high-technology industries in the developed economies like the USA and Europe. It also found that ecosystem creation, accessing innovation and corporate strategy have been preferred as the most productive modes of CEWS in the literature.

This review provides practitioners with a detailed list of the modes and drivers of CEWS. Subsequently, the barriers that need to be managed to successfully execute a specific mode of engagement. This shall enable the practitioners in developing and adopting the best practices while engaging with the start-ups to better facilitate the outcomes of CEWS.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no systematic literature review available in the domain of CEWS – thus, this study makes an important methodological contribution to the field. By consolidating the fragmented yet growing knowledge on CEWS, the study presents a detailed understanding of what drives and obstructs the engagement between large corporations and start-ups.

This paper aims to help managers understand digital disruption and implement strategies that will support the digital transformation of companies. Traditional companies need to learn from disruptive ventures and reimagine their business models based on digitalization.

The study is based on multiple case studies of both disruptive startups and established organizations navigating digital transformations.

The authors introduce three levels of digitalization to build a framework of six different value creation stages that result from digitalization. Companies need to create digital products, enhance their processes with digital technology and most important reimagine their business models.

Managers receive guidance on how to deal with digital disruption. They can learn from pathfinding companies that successfully leveraged digital technology to create and capture new value.

The original contribution of this paper is a simple and useful framework to understand and leverage digital disruption.

In this chapter, we have focused on system processing through incoming data and big data and system analysis after data processing and clustering and then intelligent decision-making that can be driven and done entirely through an Internet of Thing (IoT), AI, BI and the future of fourth technologies, so this new and fast processing has direct effect in consumers choices. Based on the 5th wave and i-Sustainability Plus and DCT (Doost Cultural Theroy) theories, SME 5.0/Hybrid SMEs/Tomorrow's SMEs concept, seven pillars of sustainability (7PS) model, nine pillars of sustainable governance (9PSG) model, 3D soci-eco-environment SME model and the related theories, models and concepts which has been invented, introduced and developed by Hamid Doost Mohammadian 2010–2017, to name examples, a new idea of tomorrow's SMEs, the associated theories, models and concepts, it can be assumed that a thriving Industry 4.0 implementation can take place with this comprehensive tool and method kit. The next technical-technological level represents a barrier, whether in the 5th wave theory simply called ‘Industry 5.0’ or made hardly more tangible with artificial intelligence and hyper-networking. Hybrid forms of work, with known forms of online/offline communication, are expanded with communication interfaces that support people not involved but directly and indirectly affected.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the emotional dynamics of the corporate acceleration process, using the systems psychodynamics perspective.

The study applies inductive multiple case study of embedded 10 cases of corporate acceleration, covering both incumbent and startup perspectives, occurring in the context of a corporate accelerator.

We find that (1) the process of corporate acceleration involves three phases, each of them is dominated by a different emotional state (hope, anxiety and acceptance), triggering different behavioral responses; (2) as a means to deal with negative emotions, entrepreneurs and corporate acceleration program's team members develop different mechanisms of dealing with contradictories in subsequent acceleration phases (defense and copying mechanisms), which are reflected in their behaviors. Coping mechanisms with goal reformulation (i.e. refocus from the officially declared “open innovation” goals toward mainly symbolic ones) is an effective strategy to manage negative emotions in third phase of the acceleration.

Our sample is limited to two relatively similar accelerators established by telecom companies, and therefore, our theoretical and practical conclusions cannot be generalized.

We supplement the studies of corporate accelerators that imply how to design them better and improve decision-making rules with recommendation that in order to improve their effectiveness in terms of learning and innovations, their managers need not only to learn how to manage structural and procedural differences but also how to overcome social defenses triggered by corporate–startups cooperation.

By documenting a multidimensional impact of acceleration process, and especially shedding light on psychodynamic aspects behind such liaisons, this paper contributes to richer understanding of corporate–startup relationships, typically examined through a rationalistic lens of strategy literature. The study contributes to interorganizational research and open innovation literature, by showing that corporate acceleration process is marked by phases based on the type of emotions intertwined with the nature and dynamism of its life cycle. It indicates how these emotions are managed depending on their type.

Corporations' emphasis on startup collaboration for corporate innovation has reached a new level in the context of digital transformation. The purpose of this paper is to examine three different models of corporate-startup collaboration and the models' effects on the case companies' capabilities for, and actual outcome in regards to their business transformations.

The theory and case studies on corporate-startup collaboration models are based on several years' empirical study on 30+ multi-national corporations in the Western world. Further, iterative literature reviews on digital and business transformation have been conducted, leading to the identification of two different, but complementing frameworks used to analyze each case's capabilities and outcome in regards to business transformation.

Collaboration with startups was found to positively affect the firms' business transformation. Further, the three-step analytical process is a valuable path to better understand, and improve, the cases' capability for, and outcome in regards to their business transformations.

The paper includes three case studies and a new process for analyzing their effects on capabilities for, and actual outcome in regards to business transformation. More research is needed, both on cases and on how to refine the analytical process.

The practical contributions from this paper are the in-depth description of the three operational cases, as well as insights on how each model's set up (approach) can affect both capabilities for, but also level of business transformation. As a result, a company might need a portfolio of different startup collaboration initiatives in order to manage a more holistic transformation of their business.

The paper's main theoretical and practical contributions are further knowledge on organizations and organizational practices for corporate-startup collaboration, as well as a three-step process for analyzing each case's effect on the respective firm's capabilities for, and actual outcome in regards to business transformation.

Although service research typically asserts that institutions coordinate actors’ value creation processes, institutions and resources are not necessarily transparent, aligned, or pre-existing. This paper aims to develop a more granular perspective on how actors coordinate for value.

Drawing on the established concepts of signaling and screening theory, this paper adopts a service marketing perspective to explore how independent heterogeneous actors coordinate for value creation at the individual level. Illustrative cases of corporate startup collaborations are presented in support of the proposed conceptual framework.

Actors share and acquire information through signaling and screening activities in a coordinative dialogue with other actors. These resource integration activities (for resource creation and matching) affect actors’ valuations and future actions.

The one-sided explanations of coordination in the existing literature reflect the dominance of the institutional theory. By contrast, the proposed agency-oriented perspective based on the integration of signaling and screening functions offers a more granular conceptualization of the resource integration process. As well as capturing how actors use coordinating dialogue to match resources and institutions, this account also shows that matching is a core element of resource integration rather than an antecedent. The findings indicate paths for future research that focus on the actor.

This paper aims to review the existing literature on structured corporate–startup collaboration programs (SCSCPs) concerning their objectives and organizational design components. The design components of the program execution are analyzed on how they impact knowledge transfer and how the extant literature on SCSCP considers the knowledge management topic. A new perspective to examine its ramifications will be discussed.

Through an integrative literature review, 103 papers on the topic of SCSCP are analyzed about references of objectives and design components of the programs.

The literature shows a strong focus on strategic objectives corporations pursue in implementing an SCSCP. The design components can be divided into governance mode, structural decisions, selection of ventures, program execution and follow up.

The literature review shows a lack of insights into the knowledge transfer process between the corporation and the ventures. Therefore, this study suggests a practice-based, longitudinal perspective on the interaction processes that occur during the program execution of an SCSCP.

Compared to existing literature reviews, the study takes the corporation’s perspective on incubation and acceleration and reveals design components specific to the corporate forms. Furthermore, SCSCPs center around strategic value generation and the design of the programs can vary highly. It is proposed that knowledge transfer is the central aspect of corporate programs and that a practice-based perspective would enrich the research on knowledge transfer in highly complex setups like this.

The innovative capacity of an organization is typically realized through unit-level teams. Previous studies correlate innovation performance with cultural diversity of teams, but note that team dynamics need to be optimized to derive maximum benefit. Herein, this study offers an assessment of available team building instruments through the lens of diverse innovation teams. In a demonstration project in the pharmaceutical industry, this study then outlines specific tools and approaches which can be successfully deployed through team coaching and mentoring.

A cluster of nine innovation teams with varying degrees of cultural diversity was provided with assessment and management instruments which had been identified and field tested by a mentoring team. Content included cultural awareness tools, innovation team profiling methods and Team Science (SciTS) ideology. Teams were funded, coached and mentored through a six-month performance period and assessed at regular intervals.

Team assessments provided correlations between performance (measured by project completion and new intellectual property generated) and diversity together with wealth of information on intra-team culture and dynamics. Concrete recommendations from the study include adoption of appropriate communication standards to promote inclusivity, use of SciTS operational tracking metrics to enhance engagement, use of the FourSight group profiling methodology and cultural quotient scale cultural awareness instruments at team-forming stage to promote effective dynamics and enhance inclusivity.

Cultural diversity has a positive impact on innovation teams. This said, for maximum benefit cultural awareness of team members should be optimized to avoid unintended conflicts developing. Such issues can be exacerbated when teams are deployed remotely and preventative measures should be established. These issues became of heightened significance as a result of telecommuting imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and have longer-term implications, as corporations consider global air travel reduction through environmental concerns. A tracking tool is described to monitor team engagement and promote inclusivity. It is expected that the learnings can influence how teams can best form, normalize and operate within corporate innovation programs and form the basis of long-term impact studies.

This represents the first systematic study on the impact of cultural diversity and team dynamics within innovation programs in the pharmaceutical industry. The tools and methodologies deployed are widely available and can be adopted by innovation teams in many adjacent industries with established innovation ecosystems.