Speed is absolutely fundamental to innovation.

But for so many of today’s traditional, large organizations, speed is not their strongest hand — in fact, it’s usually their 2–7.

Plagued with an environment of consensus-seeking, process paralysis, regulation, and legacy systems, traditional organizations which realize that they need to innovate — but often struggle to do so internally — are turning to startups and scale-ups.

By combining the domain expertise, assets, and resources of a large organization with the talent, tech, and speed of startups, good things are said to happen.

You Can Only Move as Fast as What’s in Front of You

When it comes to open innovation and working with external parties, corporate procurement often crashes the party, requesting the same kind of documentation from startups — who operate in a fundamentally different environment — as they do from large, established players in mature industries.

All in the name of arse-covering. 🍑

Here’s a small snapshot of just some of what a traditional organization typically requests from startups and scale-ups that they have an interest in working with.

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What this signals to the market is that this organization:

• is not ready to work with startups
• is not ready for the fast-changing and increasingly uncertain realities of the 21st Century, that call for flexibility and adaptability
• has a weak innovation function that either doesn’t ‘get it’ or has little influence over the big decisions that actually matter

A consequence of this is that:

• Credible startups and scale-ups will refuse to work with you
• Those that do can’t meaningfully work with you to deliver outcomes
• Your organization won’t be able to move quickly enough to take advantage of emerging technology and business model shifts, relative to your more fluid competitors.