Beware the corporate "innovation team"

"ACME Inc, a Fortune 500 company welcomes submissions from SME's & Startups" - what's not to love about that!

Well, having worked within corporate innovation teams and subsequently pitched to some, I want to tell you that things are not quite as they seem...

With a few exceptions, large corporates struggle to get new ideas off the ground. However once they do get going, they are usually pretty successful. They have the financial resources and experienced delivery teams to make things happen.

The challenge faced by the corporate is deciding whether to formally initiate a project and commit the resources to it. This is where the startup comes into play. Working with startups allows large corporates to test the water. The eager startup will move heaven and earth to overcome the hurdles, most of which will be erected by the corporate itself.

For example, the compliance team within the ACME Inc may insist on X, but the ACME delivery team might only support Y. Result - nothing happens. However, the eager startup - Gullible LLC, will graciously rewrite their entire platform to support both X and Y. It’s a match made in heaven. Until the corporate decides to formally initiate the project…

At this point the startup has de-risked everything - the corporate knows what to do, the business case can be justified. Time to hand over to the grown ups. The in house delivery team takes over, thanks the startup for their hard work and brings in Infosys, IBM or whoever else to take the project through to production.

The truth is that for the typical corporate, startups are most valuable during the earliest stages of a project. As the project matures, startups become less of an asset and more of a liability.