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Digitization puts companies under high pressure to change. Digital innovations change processes, value chains and business models of companies – and sometimes even entire industries. Established companies often find it difficult to initiate the necessary innovation processes. Often there is a lack of technological knowledge or skills to successfully implement these processes. For this reason, companies are increasingly cooperating with technology start-ups. For industrial companies, five concrete opportunities can be derived from such cooperations, which were identified on the basis of 28 interviews with start-ups, industrial companies and other experts from the industry environment: Increasing organizational innovation capability, generating new customer projects, improving corporate communication, reflecting on existing organizational structures and increasing attractiveness as an employer. In practice, however, these opportunities are still far too little used by companies.

In practice, however, the opportunities often remain unused. So far, cooperations are mainly entered into with the aim of improving already existing products or optimizing manufacturing processes. However, a strategic implementation of cooperations that systematically uses the potential of the five opportunities is largely lacking. However, a conscious approach is necessary in order to react quickly to the constantly changing customer needs and market requirements and to remain competitive in the future. If companies also succeed in working successfully with start-ups, they can build a reputation as cooperation partners in the start-up scene. This can lead to a higher active influx of start-ups, with whose help companies can tap further digitization potential.

The article is based on the practical study “Cooperation against the background of digital transformation” by Dr. Anne Busch, Prof. Dr. Ann-Christine Schulz and Prof. Markus Scholz.

Here the link to IT&Production.