There is an old rule of thumb that service providers in a market improve its efficiency by about five-fold.

Now, Spain-based IESE Business School has tackled how corporations can improve their open innovation and venturing approach through the use of enablers.

These are an institution or individual, such as consultancies, accelerators, incubators, other investors, governments and chambers of commerce, think tanks and media and other corporations, within an innovation ecosystem that facilitate “a resource or activity in the collaboration between an established corporation and a startup in order for the corporation to attract and adopt innovation”.

IESE’s paper, Open Innovation, interviewed 94 chief innovation officer types about if or how they used enablers and why (see table).

But as venturing becomes more common, professional corporate teams can be enablers for other corporations, tapping into a new revenue stream and positioning themselves as experts among experts.

After all, as Wendell Brooks, president of Intel Capital, has noted at the GCVI Summit, corporations are better when they work and invest together.

James Mawson

James Mawson is founder and chief executive of Global Venturing.