Gorillas Can Dance

CHAPTER ONEWHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP MATTERS FOR LARGE CORPORATIONS

When large companies started to work with startups, people initially thought this whole startup thing was “just a trend.” I don't think it's a trend at all. It's a fundamental transformation in the way that business innovation occurs.

– Dave Drach, Vice President–Innovation Sales, Techstars¹

WHY PARTNER WITH STARTUPS

In the mid-2000s, during the early stages of my research on “dancing with gorillas” – startups partnering with large corporations – I was hard-pressed to find examples of active efforts to make this work. Within a decade, however, things had changed dramatically, with numerous corporations actually having managers with the word “startup” in their job title. The gorillas, it would appear, have been learning to dance.

My research, over 15 years, has involved over 400 interviews with corporate managers, startup entrepreneurs, and other individuals involved in corporate-startup partnering (see “About the Research”). My field interviews have taken me to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, where a company called The Floor connects fintech startups, to Zurich, where the stock exchange there is similarly connecting startups with large corporations, and to London, where I met a Silicon Valley–based fintech startup called Crowdz in the Barclays accelerator that is seeking to transform supply chain finance for SMEs, as well as to Munich offices of BMW Startup Garage and Nissan's Infiniti Labs in Hong Kong, where ...