Tapping Creativity: Industrial Corporations Buying Into Startups
WESEL, Germany – Major German corporations are increasingly taking stakes in startups in order to profit from their creativity. One in five companies with more than 1,000 employees have taken a share in startup enterprises as a means of promoting innovation. Such shareholding models are found much less often in smaller enterprises. Only one in 10 enterprises with fewer than 1,000 employees are pursuing this strategy. These are some of the findings of the Industry Innovation Index 2015. This cross-sector study, conducted by the forsa institute on behalf of the specialty chemicals company ALTANA, surveyed 250 top decision makers and 250 entry-level employees in German industrial companies.
"German industry has an undeniably great innovative strength, and that's precisely why we can also learn from new market players and from other countries," says ALTANA CEO Dr. Matthias L. Wolfgruber. "Innovative capability is always connected with the sharing of knowledge. I personally admire the entrepreneurial courage in the U.S." The study confirms that Germany presents underutilized potential in this respect: two out of five industry managers say that their company has little or no willingness to assume risk. Entrepreneurial courage is a strong feature of only 14 percent of companies.