Five Questions a Corporate Should Ask Themselves Prior to Collaboration
Takwa Khelifi, LEONI Wiring Systems Tunisia
We have had interesting experiences with Tunisian start-ups that helped us solve problems and provided us with suitable solutions based on our needs. But before acting on them and starting collaboration with start-ups, there were crucial questions that we had to answer:
1. Do we know what we want to achieve?
It is important for us to ask this question, since the reasons for corporate-start-up collaboration should be aligned with the company’s short term and long term strategies, across departments and among company’s leaders. It is interesting to see whether the vision of the start-up is aligned with our vision or not; we believe strongly that understanding the main target and the reasons behind building partnerships and collaborations with start-ups is crucial. It is also about setting goals in accordance with available resources within the company, such as know-how, time, budget and people.
2. Have we decided what type of collaboration is suitable for our company?
We see that there are many types of possible collaborations with start-ups, for example we may be looking for solution providers, innovation, new technologies, or in-house acceleration programs. Drawing a clear path for partnership is not only one of the main criteria we set for our start-up partner validation, but a fundamental internal strategy step to be agreed upon in advance with staff involved in venture collaboration.
3. Do we have a dedicated person or team for start-up collaboration?
Building sustainable partnerships with start-ups or undertaking a project like finding new technologies is not a simple task that can be tackled alone. This is why we have assigned a team to oversee the global collaboration activities
4. How do we feel about the future of our industry, and our company’s place in it?
We ask ourselves questions like this to assess our place in the future of our industry: “Where do we see our company in 5 years?” “Are we confident that the current direction will strengthen our position in the marketplace in the coming years?” “Are we fast enough to grow in parallel with the speed of technological growth and innovation?” So it’s really important for us to consider the vision of our firm when tackling start-up collaborations.
5. Are we ready to adapt to the start-up culture?
There is a quote that says “Good start-ups are like good programs; you don’t choose them, they choose you” and this makes us ask several questions concerning the start-up culture and collaboration: “What can we offer to the start-up?” “Can we move along at the same speed?” Collaborating with young or fresh start-ups is kind of risky; failure is natural for many start-ups. Things can move at the speed of light; a few months can mean growth or death for a start-up. At the end of the day, it’s all about management expectations, ambition level, speed and adaptability.