Innovation is a must to thrive in today’s world of business for organizations of all sizes. On one hand, large companies face unprecedented demand for customization, shorter times-to-market,and increased competition. On the other, startups face competition, difficulties scaling their products, and often lack connections to large markets.

Companies and emerging startups have realized that partnering can lead to innovating together. There to facilitate these partnerships are startup accelerators like Rocketspace, forging these partnerships through their Corporate Innovation Program with companies such as Microsoft and Pearson. The net result is that corporations are gaining an early pulse of innovation trends, while startups are gaining market validation and invaluable industry connections and advice.

In many cases, large corporations crowdsource innovation problems and challenges.  This gives startups the opportunity to solve these challenges and build a strong relationship with corporations. This is a win-win-win situation. The partnership promotes collaboration and creative problem solving that leads to iterate ideas very quickly. And most importantly, customers (who typically demand better and faster) are winning because they gain access to the most innovative products in the marketplace.

Corporate organizations and startups incubating together is a trend that will continue to grow. With the growth in the collaborative economy, this partnership will expand into greater ecosystems with members across industries.

This post was co-written in partnership with Pablo Quintanilla, senior policy analyst at Salesforce.

At Dreamforce we’ll be exploring this trend at Open Innovation: Building Relationships Between Startups and Global Brands. Join us by registering at the button below.