Break Out to Open Innovation

The MIT Sloan Management Review posted an article which noted that in 2016, R&D and digital business managers at Mercedes’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, realized that their efforts to collaborate with startups — a valuable source of external innovation — were being hampered by the company’s existing innovation processes. In response, a new team within R&D was formed to build a better bridge between the promising ideas of external startups and the innovation needs of Mercedes’s internal business units.  The team joined forces with partners from academia and industry to cofound Startup Autobahn, what we call an open corporate accelerator. This model welcomes multiple sponsor companies and can attract a broader array of more mature startups. The model improves sponsor access to external innovation and enhances the overall competitiveness of regional ecosystems.

Click here to read the full article.

Image via Flickr.