Entrepreneurship-SME

Siemens named 2022 World’s Corporate Startup Stars

  • 6 December 2022

A total of 100 companies from all over the world have been named winners in the 2022 Corporate Startup Stars awards: 50 as Corporate Startup Stars and 50 companies named Open Innovation Challengers – with Siemens securing the top position.

For the 7th year running, the world’s most active corporates working with startups and worldwide best practices in corporate-startup collaboration have been recognised and identified at the prestigious annual Corporate Startup Stars awards, jointly organised by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and Mind the Bridge,

Siemens was named the overall best in class of the 2022 edition, among a cohort of 100 selected companies. Held today in London, the official Award Ceremony was opened by ICC President Maria Fernanda Garza and closed with a high-level panel about open innovation and startup-corporate collaboration organised by Economist Impact.

Developed through the Corporate Startup Stars initiative, the ‘Gold Standards for the World’s Companies to Incorporate Open Innovation and Corporate Startup Collaboration’ position paper was also launched during the event.

Conceived as a live document, to be continually updated based on trends and learning emerging from the annual Corporate Startup Stars awards, the paper sets out a set of criteria which corporations should follow in integrating Open Innovation into their organisations by working with Startups and ultimately Scaleups.

Maria Fernanda Garza, chair of ICC, said: “As the voice of businesses large and small, we hope our new report with Mind the Bridge will become an industry standard roadmap for major companies to embed open innovation and partnership with startups into their strategy and operations. ICC will be working through our regional Centres of Entrepreneurship and global network of over 45 million companies worldwide, to extend the valuable insight and best practices accumulated from the Corporate Startup Stars Awards to enable more open innovation and collaboration.”

Candace Johnson, ICC Executive Board Member, Vice-Chair of the ICC Policy Commission and Chair of the Corporate Startup Stars Judging Committee, said: “There is no silver bullet, rather multiple complementary approaches and models targeting different goals and innovation horizons. In light of that, ICC and Mind the Bridge together established in 2020 the Corporate Startup Stars initiative to gather best practices and begin defining and setting the standards for Corporate-Startup Collaboration in a manner that is practical, comprehensive, and able to capture the new approaches that are constantly emerging.”

Along with Siemens, 49 other companies were named as the 2022 Corporate Startup Stars with 50 more recognised in the “Open Innovation Challengers” category. Furthermore, recently created to recognise those Open Innovation best practices put in place by companies outside of the Fortune 500/Forbes 2000 lists, the new “Rising Stars Award” was given to ARM, Daewoong Pharmaceutical, and Körber. 

Alberto Onetti, Chairman of Mind the Bridge, said: “Open Innovation is no longer a black box, it’s fast becoming ubiquitous. Back in 2016, when we first launched the Corporate Startup Stars Awards, the goal was to shed light on a fast-emerging phenomenon. Today, six years later, companies have gathered experience and focus on results. Although the modes of collaboration are in continuous evolution, there are best practices that are arising as well as KPIs for measuring impact.”

Recognising the best performers across different geographies, Regional Awards were also presented to AXA (Europe), Intel (North America), Banco Bradesco (South America), Standard Bank (Africa), Saudi Aramco (Middle East), LG Electronics (East Asia), Huawei (China), while Special Awards in eight categories singled out approaches and best practices meriting recognition:

Marco Marinucci, CEO and Founder of Mind the Bridge said: “The Open Innovation paradigm has evolved in time to become a multi-faceted play. On the one hand, from the outside, it is possible to see the tools and initiatives that corporates put in action to engage with the world of startups and scaleups, from corporate innovation outposts in global tech hotspots to accelerators, venture builders and intrapreneurship programs up to partnerships, investments, and M&A transactions. On the other hand, internal enabling-conditions are equally relevant to produce sustainable innovation results – added – Models and processes are constantly evolving over time. Here the Corporate Startup Stars provide invaluable benchmarks.”

Collaboration between corporates and startups, if done right, can bring tremendous benefit to both. However, it is hard to get it right and modes of collaboration are in continuous evolution. Launched by Mind the Bridge under the European Commission’s Startup Europe Partnership initiative in 2016 and scaled at global level thanks to the involvement of ICC, the Corporate Startup Stars Awards aims to gather best practices and begin defining and setting the standards for Corporate-Startup Collaboration in a manner that is practical, comprehensive, and able to capture the new approaches that are constantly emerging.

Download “Gold Standards for the World’s Companies to Incorporate Open Innovation and Corporate StartUp Collaboration”.