About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

Open Innovation in Europe: A Snapshot of the SEP Europe’s Corporate Startup Stars 2017

Based on data from around 30 of the most successful corporates in Europe, the report seeks to map out current practices in open innovation

As part of the Startup Europe Partnership, we ran a competition to identify the most ‘startup-friendly’ corporates in Europe, involving an open call for nominations and a review of corporate submissions by an expert panel.

This short report summarises the open innovation practices of the finalists, focussing on the different mechanisms by which they are working with startups.

Key findings

  • We detect a growing trend in corporates outsourcing acceleration programmes to third parties, driven in part by concerns about financial sustainability of these programmes.
  • Our analysis confirms that European corporations are mildly acquisitive, in comparison with US counterparts.
  • Among the corporate finalists that were examined, 84 per cent had a dedicated open innovation unit, 52 per cent ran an accelerator programme and 32 per cent participated in accelerators run by third parties, whilst 87 per cent had active procurement programmes involving startups.

Authors

Jonathan Bone

Jonathan Bone

Jonathan Bone

Mission Manager, healthy life mission

Jonathan works within Nesta Cymru (Wales), focusing on working across public, private and non-profit sectors to deliver innovative solutions that tackle obesity and loneliness in Wales.

View profile
Augustina Sol Eskenazi

Augustina Sol Eskenazi

Augustina Sol Eskenazi

Startups Intern

Sol was an intern in the Research, Analysis and Policy team. In this role, she supported research focused on the field of startups and entrepreneurship.

View profile
Christopher Haley

Christopher Haley

Christopher Haley

Head of New Technology & Startup Research

Chris led Nesta's research interests into how startups and new technologies can drive economic growth, and what this means for businesses, intermediaries and for the government.

View profile
Simona Bielli

Simona Bielli

Simona Bielli

Head of Programmes – Nesta Italia

Over the last year, Simona was working on a new exciting project that led to the foundation of Nesta Italia.

View profile