The roots of these broad-based collaborations lie in the concept of "open innovation" created by Henry Chesbrough, a professor at Harvard and later at the University of Berkeley. He first described open innovation as a paradigm that assumes that companies can and must use both external and internal ideas and internal and external market access channels to develop their technology in order to achieve market success. If they do not do this, but follow the traditional, closed innovation process, they may end up like Xerox with its PARCS laboratory, where they actually invented the technologies that formed the basis of Silicon Valley's leading high-tech companies, such as the computer mouse, graphical user interface and other cutting-edge technologies, but failed to capitalise on them, with hundreds of technology companies becoming the beneficiaries (Chesbrough, 2003).

The intention of large companies to open up innovation is clearly evident. The closed innovation model seems to be increasingly opening up, with a series of startup programmes, internal idea competitions and closer cooperation with startup companies emerging over the past decade. Several large companies have attempted to adopt the startup operating model and culture, as evidenced by the emergence of innovation labs within companies, with the usual foosball tables and creative corners of the startup world, as well as soundproof meeting boxes that provide a retreat from the noise of the open office. The design of traditional workplaces and development departments is therefore changing, but it should be noted that a large company is by no means a grown-up version of a startup.

It is a mistake to simply advise large companies "to be like a startup and behave like one". This advice ignores the realities that large companies already have existing business lines and customer bases, have scaled up their business models, and have created processes that allow them to develop new business lines at a scale that most startups can only dream of. Thanks to their existing business lines, processes and value chains, they can create a unique environment for launching Lean Startup programmes within the company. In line with this, Chesbrough writes in his latest book, based on a study of the innovation practices of a number of large companies, that large companies that consider innovation an important priority use the targeted inflow and outflow of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand the market for the external use of innovation. He distinguishes between the following two types of corporate startup programmes (Chesbrough, 2020):

What do we consider to be corporate venturing? We can say that corporate venturing is part of the global innovation strategy of large companies, based on a methodology in which companies collaborate with startups through a wide range of tools and models that can provide significant opportunities and results for both parties. All this takes place in an economic and social environment in which the most important question for company owners, top management and executives remains how to achieve sustainable growth and operate profitably.

According to the scientific approach, corporate venturing is a tool for existing companies to build and support new business opportunities, regardless of their location and place of implementation. As a result of corporate venturing, new business areas are created within or outside the company, and existing areas are redefined (Mes, 2011).

The increasing digitalisation of corporate operations has an unforeseeable impact on industries and is accelerating the transformation of entire sectors and companies at an extraordinary rate. In this context, companies need to find ways to reinvent their business models more than ever before. Maintaining and enhancing their competitiveness depends largely on business model innovation if they do not want to risk falling behind, which could mean their ultimate failure and liquidation. Recent examples from a number of large companies show how quickly customers can be lost when a "disruptor", a startup offering a breakthrough solution, appears on the market. Instead of a long list of examples, we refer here to KODAK and Instagram, which in the 2000s showed how David can defeat Goliath with an innovative business model when a more than century-old "mammoth company" refuses to fundamentally change its business model, even in the face of the success of a challenging startup.

It is also worth noting that in 2020, the average lifespan of companies listed on the Standard and Poor's 500 index was just over 21 years, compared to 32 years in 1965. For companies listed on the S&P 500 index, there is a clear long-term trend of declining company longevity, which is expected to continue in the 2020s. It is therefore not surprising that the CEOs and executives of the world's leading companies are doing everything they can to boost their innovation activities. An important element of this is joint development with external partners and seizing innovations implemented by external companies and startups, which acts as a catalyst for achieving profitable growth, gaining a competitive advantage and increasing market share. The latter is particularly important in monopolistic and oligopolistic sectors, where the winner or the top 10 companies take almost everything.

Business researchers and innovation experts agree that it is very difficult and challenging for companies to integrate new business models and, in some cases, acquired companies and startups into their own organisations. A similar challenge for them is the integration of the winners of various internal corporate innovation programmes, idea competitions and hackathons into their existing processes and organisational units. In addition, the participants in the innovation theatre want a different choreography, more autonomy and resources, but at the same time they do not accept traditional hierarchical functioning. Company management must take these internal contradictions seriously, otherwise companies may lose their best and most innovative developers and innovators. In addition, the characteristics, qualities and reactions of the younger generation must also be taken into account in order to develop appropriate organisational structures and incentives. Of course, we must not forget the fact that, with the increase in retirement ages, three or four generations are working at the same time in a single organisational unit, and there can be huge differences between the behaviour and expectations of younger and older developers. So, organisational developers and HR managers have their work cut out for them!

Fortunately, there are many positive and adaptable examples in the technology and telecommunications industries, where players such as Skype, Facebook and WhatsApp have completely revolutionised the way the sector operates. This has also happened in traditional industries, such as accommodation, where AirBnB has transformed the industry, having an unexpected impact on guesthouses and hotels. In these cases, the change began with a small, marginal use, which over time became much larger and more powerful. Therefore, the development and effective operation of corporate venture programmes is more relevant than ever. This is because corporate venture development leverages the traditional innovation capabilities of startups and corporations: the fresh business models, technologies and inventions of startups, and the experience of large corporations in scaling innovative solutions and processes and conquering new markets.

In an ever-changing economy, corporate leaders need to monitor and thoroughly analyse their environment, the opportunities offered by new technologies and emerging new companies, potential "Davids", in order to acquire and integrate external innovation into their organisations, in addition to internal research and development and acquisition activities. Greater interoperability, networking and interaction with the outside world, university researchers and startups is highly recommended, especially in cases where new business models and technologies pose a significant challenge to the industry. This is exactly what corporate venturing offers: a collaborative framework that acts as a bridge between innovative and disruptive startups and large, established companies.

The relative affordability of new technologies and the availability of capital enable startups and small businesses to offer solutions that were previously only available to large, established companies in a given industry. For example, the cost of manufacturing industrial robots has fallen to a tenth or a twentieth of what it was 10 years ago. In the case of drones, the cost reduction is even more dramatic, enabling numerous new experimental developments with these devices, even for smaller companies. Advances in cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technology are enabling more efficient collaboration than ever before. These changes have forced traditional large companies and key industry players to open up their innovation ecosystems and increase their research and innovation collaborations with other companies and research institutions.

It appears that a hybrid cooperation model is emerging in modern economies, in which both dynamic and risk-taking startups and large companies with perfectly developed processes and customer bases are needed to solve the complex problems that arise in business and social life. A series of studies and the case studies in Chapter 4 show that large companies face serious difficulties when they try to launch disruptive developments using their own internal resources. They are simply not socialised for this and do not have the processes and incentives in place to enable their employees and developers to implement developments that are more significant and larger in scale than reducing errors and improving efficiency. There are numerous organisational, cognitive and behavioural factors behind this, and it is not easy to reprogram an "ocean liner" in a short period of time and make it agile. In order to establish cooperation, it is essential to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages of traditional and startup companies, as it is precisely the latter factors that can be addressed through collaboration (Table 9).

Startups primarily engage with large companies or long-established businesses in order to form strategic partnerships. For them, it is particularly important to have the support of larger and more experienced companies, which help them with valuable resources, such as access to their sales network and supply chain, in exchange for innovative ideas and tested solutions. This is hugely important for startups, because founders typically focus almost exclusively on the technical aspects of implementing their ideas, and their team members tend to be engineers rather than business professionals.