As corporations seek greater revenues from working with entrepreneurs, large and small businesses are failing to use digital collaboration to innovate together, according to new research by Accenture. As a result, they are putting at risk a $1.5 trillion growth opportunity, equivalent to 2.2 per cent of global GDP. In the US, $433 billion of potential growth is at risk, equivalent of 2.7 per cent of the US economy.
According to the report, 82 per cent of corporates say they can learn from start-ups/ entrepreneurs about how to become a digital business. And they expect the proportion of their revenues generated by collaboration with entrepreneurs to rise from an average of 9 per cent today to 20 per cent in five years.
The report, Harnessing the Power of Entrepreneurs to Open Innovation , published in association with the G20 Young Entrepreneurs Alliance, surveyed more than 1,000 entrepreneurs and 1,000 large companies in the G20 economies.
Large companies and entrepreneurs agree that today’s corporate venturing and incubator models of collaboration will increasingly give way to more open and joint innovation, whereby corporates don’t just fund startups, but use digital collaboration to jointly create innovations in broader networks of partners. However, corporates and entrepreneurs don’t see eye to eye on how to achieve that.
Cultural differences compound the divisions. The report found that, while 75 per cent of large companies judge themselves as sufficiently entrepreneurial, 75 per cent of those entrepreneurs who previously worked at large companies left because they did not feel they could be entrepreneurial there.
Read the whole report here .