Corporate want to interact with startups at an early stage but innovation efforts by corporates are still relatively underdeveloped, according to a report by US-based accelerator MassChallenge and consulting firm Imaginatik.
The State of Startup/Corporate Collaboration 2016 interviewed 112 representatives from large companies including Microsoft, Pfizer, Cisco, IBM, Xerox and KLM as well as 233 startups.
A total of 82% of the corporates stated interacting with startups was at least somewhat important, 23% of which listed the practice as ‘mission critical’. 67% said they favour exploring new technologies and business models by linking with startups at an early stage.
Interestingly, 44% of the corporate representatives viewed strategic fit as the primary factor in whether a relationship with a startup will succeed, while 65% of the startups viewed corporates as potential strategic partners.
The report did suggest there is room for improvement, with 25% of the corporate respondents answering they did not know how much their companies spent on innovation each year. The same percentage did however spend more than $1m each year on innovation.