Centre of Entrepreneurship

Gold Standards for the World’s Companies to Incorporate Open Innovation and Corporate-Startup Collaboration 

  • 6 December 2022

Gold Standards for the World’s Companies to Incorporate Open Innovation and Corporate-Startup Collaboration 

With the goal of encouraging open innovation, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in partnership with Mind the Bridge defined and set the standards for corporations looking to collaborate with startups on open innovation initiatives. This documents provides definitions and an open innovation readiness self-assessment tool, alongside an overview of global initiatives and enabling factors for open innovation.  

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What is open innovation and how do companies benefit from it?  

Open innovation is a democratised approach to innovation where collaboration among internal and external resources replaces conventional closed research and development silos. Collaboration between corporates and startups, if done right, can bring tremendous benefit to both. Startups can access invaluable resources and market insight which can help them scale, while for established companies, such collaborations offer an important mode of innovation — as well as subtler benefits like cultural change. However, it is hard to get it right and modes of collaboration are in continuous evolution. 

How can corporations and startups innovate together?   

In 2020, ICC and Mind the Bridge partnered on the Corporate Startup Stars initiative to gather best practices from around the world that serve as a basis for this first set of gold standards for harnessing open innovation.  

All initiatives and tools presented in the document aim to help companies set up enabling conditions for open innovation and navigate constantly evolving approaches in order to innovate and avoid disruption. 

This document is conceived as a living document to be continually updated based on trends and learnings emerging from the annual Corporate Startup Stars awards.