1+1=3 – Added Value Through Collaboration Between Start-Ups and Established Companies
On Thursday, January 27th, 2022, the INNO Festival BW took place for the second time. It is a event, where politics, science and business met with one goal: to bring startups and companies in contact with each other to help Baden-Württemberg build a sustainable future. For this time, the focus was on topics of co-creation and sustainability.
At the beginning, the Minister of Economic Affairs of Baden-Württemberg, Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, opened the event with some inspiring words: "Our state is more than ever dependent on innovative start-ups. At a time when technologies are changing rapidly and classic industries are being turned upside down, start-ups have become indispensable cooperation partners for established companies. They are driving transformation processes in the areas of digitalization, mobility, life science and climate protection." With these words, Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut already addressed the two main themes of the INNO Festival: Co-Creation and Sustainability.
Why Should Companies and Start-Ups Work Together?
The first half of the event revolved around the topic of "co-creation", i.e. the collaboration between start-ups and established corporations. In an expert talk, Alfons Riek from Festo, Georg Beyschlag from TeamViewer and Lisa Rosa Bräutigam from nuwo talked about start-ups and companies can successfully collaborate. They concluded that the cooperation of start-ups and companies leads to added value for both: 1+1=3. Ultimately, both parties benefit. Start-ups benefit from the financial and advisory support and companies from new ideas that allow them to be marketable in the future. The expert talk was followed by the presentation of three start-ups that had already achieved a successful collaboration. Thus, the audience got a first-hand insight into the practice. Those who wanted to delve deeper into individual aspects of co-creation had the opportunity to attend various workshops after the first half of the event. The workshop allowed ecosystem partners, universities and companies to introduce themselves and their projects with various start-ups.
How Do We Get To a Sustainable Economy and What Role Do Startups Play?
The second part of the event revolved around the topic of sustainability. In her keynote speech, Miki Yokoyama advocated for integrating sustainability into the economy, promoting impact capitalism and creating more equal opportunities. She explained that impact capitalism does not aim at progress and prosperity alone, disregarding the environment, but deliberately focuses on sustainability and strengthening our planet. The collaboration between startups and established companies can help a lot to get better at this point. This was demonstrated with the presentation of three innovative startups supported by Gründermotor. Organifarms is working on a strawberry robot, Recyda is committed to better recycling, and Alpha Protein is developing industrial production equipment for scalable and sustainable breeding of insects as food and feed. After the presentation of these start-ups, visitors again had the opportunity to deepen their acquired knowledge through workshops.
With this content, the INNO-Festival once again provided a high-quality contribution to up-to-date topics and thus supports the cooperation between established companies and start-ups. The organizer Gründermotor is an initiative of Vector, Baden-Württemberg, the University of Stuttgart and Pioniergeist. Gründermotor and the INNO Festival BW are supported by EnBW, Trumpf, STIHL, MAHLE and BW Bank, among others. The partner network includes more than 70 partners from business, academia and the start-up ecosystem of Baden-Württemberg. Politics, business and education are thus pulling in the same direction. The activities focus on building a start-up culture in Baden-Württemberg with the aim of strengthening companies of the middle class.
More information on Gründermotor and the INNO Festival BW:
www.gruendermotor.io
More infomation on the start-up teams:
https://gruendermotor.io/startup-teams
Categories: HR | Corporate Communication