Wussten Sie schon: Startup-Kooperationen im Maschinenbau zahlen sich aus

According to the recently published Innovation Magazine from the ProduktionNRW competence network, collaboration with startups as an innovation strategy is becoming increasingly important for machinery and equipment manufacturers. More than 50% of these companies are already working with startups. The range of cooperation formats is broad: from hackathons to project-based collaboration to accelerator programs and strategic investments. We have compiled the most interesting facts once again.

Value of startup collaborations for machinery and equipment manufacturers

Machinery and equipment manufacturers can pursue various objectives through startup collaborations. 84% aim to improve existing products in their core business. 67% also want to develop products outside their core business and thus open up new business areas. Additional objectives include process improvement (39%) and investment opportunities (28%) among the most common initiatives.

Startups typically take on the role of innovation accelerators. With their expertise in emerging technology trends, they support established industry in bringing improved products, processes, and business models to market. The company can directly benefit from new technologies without first having to laboriously build a specialized in-house team. This results in a short time-to-market while simultaneously reducing risk and resource consumption.

The pillars of successful collaboration

58% of companies have already collaborated with startups. Of these, 71% are satisfied with their previous collaborations. 3 out of 5 collaborations were even sustainably successful, leading to longer-term partnerships.

50% of companies view clear objectives and strategy in startup cooperation as the most important success factor. Following this logic, 38% of companies see proper expectations management with realistic targets as decisive. Furthermore, 38% also see the involvement of specialist departments in the selection and initiation process as important. This ensures the problem-solution fit can be established early on. Last but not least, top management support is a success-critical factor for 42%.

Of course, the needs of startups must also be considered for successful collaboration. As young agile companies, startups value clear points of contact and lean, low-bureaucracy processes in their collaboration. They also place importance on fixed budget commitments. We can certainly agree with that at aiXbrain.

Overall, it can be said that there are generalizable success factors for collaboration between startups and machinery/equipment manufacturers. Nevertheless, it is interesting that the top 3 success factors on both sides show no overlap. This reveals a certain difference in corporate culture that needs to be understood in the early phase of collaboration in order to design the cooperation as effectively as possible.

14 practical examples

If you would like a clearer picture of what collaboration might look like in practice, you can find a total of 14 practical examples in the Innovation Magazine. We hope you enjoy reading!