AI Is Supercharging Open Innovation
AI urgency has shifted corporate-startup collaboration from filling expertise gaps to speeding AI execution, and firms with dedicated open innovation departments succeed far more often (73% vs 51%).
Summary
The Open Innovation Report 2025 surveys more than 1,000 European innovation and strategy leaders and finds 80% of corporates now see startup collaboration as important or mission-critical, up from 67% in 2023, driven mainly by the need to accelerate AI execution. Aerospace leads with 92% having collaborated with startups, while defence and homeland security lag at 42%. Experience does not make collaboration easier, as procurement and legal barriers bite when structures are not built for startups. Organisations with dedicated open innovation departments report a 73% project success rate versus 51% without.
Editor's opinion
Real proprietary survey (1,000+ orgs), but the AI-urgency framing on corporate-startup collaboration is fairly familiar territory.
Key concepts
Open innovation · Corporate-startup collaboration · OIR25 · Dedicated open innovation department