When Cisco CEO John Chambers famously said they were ‘too big to innovate’ and decided to acquire their innovation, it was a statement left many executives questioning whether they were indeed innovating or had a culture that enabled innovation.
Some were able to answer with “I think there is someone on level 3 who is doing something”. Disrupt or be disrupted, innovate or die.
Trent Bagnall, Slingshot Founder launches the Qantas Avro Accelerator
Startups can disrupt the big players without them seeing it coming. Hence a lot of corporates are deciding to mitigate this risk by engaging with startups. One way they can do this is to run a corporate accelerator program.
Generally this is a 3 month program which provides a curriculum for the founders to learn what they need. Mentors are also provided to share their knowledge, experience and contacts to really accelerate the growth of the startup.
The startup teams (often based around a theme set by the sponsoring company) will usually work as a group from a shared workspace.
In the USA, Techstars pioneered this model running programs for companies like Nike, Disney, and Barclays. Sphero was startup that went through the Disney program and they were working on a robot like ball that could roll in any direction.
While going through the program, Disney CEO Bob Iger showed the team images of a new character from the upcoming Star Wars film and asked them if they could build it. This was the BB-8 and the toy was sold as in stores all over the planet, netting Disney and the Sphero founders a very tidy wheelbarrow of cash.
Qantas are the latest corporate to join the ranks partnering with Slingshot to run the Avro Accelerator program. (avroaccelerator.qantas.com). They are using their huge customer base to lure in the coolest startups Australia can offer.
This type of program is not new to Slingshot, who have run programs for HCF, NRMA & Simplot. Slingshot was co-founded by Trent Bagnall and Craig Lambert who have both had successful careers in the tech space.
For the startups we want to fast track the startups engagement through the organisation. We want them to get to the right people and avoid the 10 cups of coffee that can often happen when a startup engages with an enterprise. said Trent.
Trent is also aware that Qantas are building their own innovation team to ensure these skills and lessons are transferred into the organisation.
The corporate needs to be focused on commercial and investment outcomes rather than running programs to improve company brand. said Trent.
As entrepreneur in residence for the program. I am excited to work with a truly international brand. For the startup that means they can access partners, suppliers and customers in every major market on the globe. Plus there is a host of free perks from companies like AWS, IBM, Adobe and SendGrid.
So if you have a great idea and a killer team, a corporate accelerator just might be what you need to shoot you ahead of the pack.
