Engage with startups purposefully.
A manual on how to create startup engagement programs: accelerators, incubators, corporate venture funds, hackathons, coworking spaces, and more.
Startup engagement is everywhere.
What do Google, the Nobel Prize laureate World Food Programme, Ford, Microsoft, the Chilean government, the city of Tulsa, the Vatican, the Canadian city of Calgary, BMW, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and a 100-year-old cement corporation all have in common?
They all work with startups. Do it too.
Customize your program.
Engaging with startup communities has today become a must for corporation or government agencies pursuing innovation. When you set up an accelerator, incubator, hackathon series or any other kind of startup program, copy-paste doesn’t work. You need to do it with intentional design.
You might be about to start working with startups but have no plan. Or you might already be working with startups but are unsatisfied with your program or have no program at all. You might be looking for a new model of startup engagement, or you have one and need to refine it. You might have been hired by a corporation, government, NGO, international institution, or university to design an accelerator, an incubator, or a hackathon series. In all these cases, this book is for you.
This book doesn’t refer only to startups emulating Google, Baidu, or Moderna. It speaks to all large organizations prioritizing strategic goals over financial goals when they engage with startups. The authors underline how strategic goals change everything. This book will not attempt to convince you to engage with startups. It postulates that you are already convinced—like in the old saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”
What People Are Saying
“Building new businesses from innovation is mandatory today. Not only because change is accelerating, and the danger of disruption is increasing. But also, because as recent studies have shown, it provides more Total Shareholder Return over a long period than M&A or buying startups. Corporate startups are the vehicles that drive business- building from innovation. But how should companies build their programs to come up with these startups and engage with startups from external ecosystems? Adam Berk and Paolo Lombardi tell you how. Their book breaks new ground. It fleshes out what to do to get the set-up for success right – and hence increasing the odds for success significantly.”
— Frank Mattes, Advisor to corporate innovators and author, “Scaling-up Corporate Startups” and “Lean Scaleup”
“The key to a great startup program is a focus on access with a process. Critical outcomes for businesses and entrepreneurs in these programs depend on meeting the right person, with the right resources and the right opportunity, at the right time. Paolo Lombardi and Adam Berk’s new book, Startup Program Design, is THE handbook for how to do just that. If you have been tasked with the big job of partnering with startups to solve big problems, you should keep this book on your desk and refer to it often.”
— John Lynn, Co-Founder and CEO of Cela Innovation
“This book sheds a whole new light on the world of startup programs and how they can be designed. Drawing on their own experiences and systematic research with other experts in the field, the authors have written a must-read book that is filled with valuable insights, examples and practical advice for anyone interested in understanding, starting or working with startup programs in the business, public and social sectors.”
— Piera Morlacchi, Associated Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organization Studies, University of Sussex Business School
Startup Program Design
The first guide to learn how to customize and design corporate programs aimed to engage effectively with external startups.