Startup;
Some defined it as a business that is less than a few years, run by a bunch of inexperienced young punks who took money from friends, family, foes, and investors and eventually go nowhere.
For the few that are lucky, they just let themselves rip apart by investors diluting their shares while still holding onto their beliefs.
However, I prefer to look at the way startups run - Nimble and how fast they can pivot. This is something that many SMEs and listed companies are unable to do so.
Too many red tapes, too many procedures to consider, too much fear of the managers that their rice bowls be gone, too big a gap for the mid to top management to maneuver. Too much at risk with care about reputation, power, money, and how others will see them if they fail.
But yet at the same time, behind their minds, they are worried sick about how to be relevant in the hypercompetitive business world that others are eating their lunches.
Solution?
- Work with the startups, embrace their working style and blend in what works best for the corp elephants.
- Use your financial means to invest in the startups’ technologies and people.
- Set up SBUs, unlearn, and learn from each other for corp innovation and digital transformations instead.
- Send your managers to get their hands dirty with the founders and interact as much as possible, exchanging ideas, solutions and build up trust between both parties.
- Get the startup to solve your immediate problems with the products that they are building (even if it is raw) but with the infrastructure, connections, networks, and access that a big corp has, you may just be able to solve their problems which may take them years to do so.
Tap onto each others’ strengths to solve each others’ weaknesses and both will come out win-win for the mid to long-term strategic planning and executions.
