Startupbootcamp, the leading international startup accelerator group, has revealed that half of its alumni (53%, to be exact) are of the opinion that corporates need to do more to address the need to innovate and genuinely disrupt their own markets, leaving these giants more open to threats from new entrants as seen with Uber and AirBnB.
Despite this, 70% of the Startupbootcamp alumni have already collaborated successfully with corporates, exhibiting an evident willingness from both parties to address this.
The findings feature in Startupbootcamp’s new report ‘Collaborate to innovate’, which explores the relationship between the startup community and global corporates, and their mutual desire to improve business practice through the adoption of new technology and approaches.
This report features Startupbootcamp’s survey of its portfolio of 350 businesses across the globe, for which six world leading companies including Cisco, ING and Intel were interviewed to better understand the potential challenges of these two worlds colliding. The report also provides actionable advice to both parties about how a platform can be built for more successful collaboration.
Within ‘Collaborate to Innovate’, the findings bring to light that while the majority of startups (45%) wish to collaborate in order to sell their business, 30% see corporates as the customer for their solutions and hope to secure pilot projects.
However, despite the fact that it is in their interest to work with startups to bring agile and innovative thinking to their business, the journey is not always plain sailing, with as many as 70% of the startup alumni experiencing a long and complicated internal process to work with corporates.
Andy Shannon, Head of Startupbootcamp Global also commented on the findings:
It’s easy to see the benefits of corporate and startup collaboration, but despite the mutual understanding between both parties, there are obvious challenges that stand in the way. Our findings emphasize these current obstacles, highlighting how developing relevant relationships is more important than ever in order to overcome these issues and collaborate to innovate within often entrenched industries.
Within the report, Jorge Rivero Sanchez, Innovation Director at VINCI Energies commented on the feasibility of working together:
The best ideas and opportunities involve working together with customers, other partners and even competitors. As simple as it may look, it requires lots of courage and generosity to truly collaborate in order to make a difference to the status quo.
