IESE expands its open innovation activity

Supported by Amazon Web Services, Nestlé, MediaMarkt, Fnac, and Kapita

• IESE --supported by companies Amazon Web Services, Nestlé, MediaMarkt, Fnac and investment firm Kapita-- expands its global activity in open innovation and corporate venturing.
• It aims to expand its knowledge creation and sharing on how corporations can better innovate with startups, optimizing speed and cost, through the corporate venturing squad model.
• This private network will be enhanced by an annual research publication, structured proofs of concept, and gatherings with C-level innovation executives in the retail sector.

MADRID, Dec. 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- IESE Business School --supported by Amazon Web Services, Nestlé, MediaMarkt, Fnac, Kapita, and more-- expands its global activity in open innovation and corporate venturing.

A relevant problem

According to a recent IESE article at Harvard Business Review: although the collaboration between corporations and startups has increased fourfold in the past six years, near 75% of these collaborations fail to obtain the desired results.

Moreover, corporations are under extra pressure to innovate faster with tighter budgets. An opportunity or resource today may be gone in 30 days. Global market volatility has intensified between two to six times in past months, according to proxies such as the CBOE Volatility Index. Companies are also struggling to beat more competitors hunting the same top-tier entrepreneurs: the number of firms collaborating with startups (so-called corporate venturing) has increased.

A research-based method to tackle the challenge

Based on years of research and a network of 500+ chief innovation officers across five continents, the school developed and coined the corporate venturing squad model, which are small groups of corporations joining forces to collaborate with one or more startups and facilitate the shared innovation experience.

On the one hand, the model improves the corporate value proposition offered to the entrepreneur, thereby aggregating value (e.g., providing complementary expertise across the value chain). On the other hand, it shares the risk and cost of the proof of concept among the squad's members, while strengthening the corporate access to startups by leveraging the scouting capabilities of each corporation.

In short, a way to strengthen the identification, collaboration, and integration of value in corporate-startup innovations.

Expected impact through a learning community

Through this specialized invite-only corporate venturing squad, curated by IESE, "the initiative aims to continue developing research in the fields of open innovation and corporate venturing" through an annual publication.

It also aims "to increase the application of insights in companies through private gatherings with C-level executives, and learning from the observation and data gathering of proofs of concepts to understand better the phenomenon, while learning and sharing knowledge with the industry", says the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center Academic Director Mª Julia Prats and Executive Director Josemaria Siota, both leading the existing Open Innovation and Corporate Venturing Institute at IESE.

For the proofs of concept, Kapita will support the startup screening process through its platform.

The list of companies that will participate in this corporate venturing squad in retail includes Amazon Web Services, Nestlé (Spain and Portugal), MediaMarkt, Fnac, Kapita, to name a few.