What is a corporate challenge?

Finding new solutions to corporate challenges through open innovation with startups and other partners.


Innovations are becoming increasingly important for companies and, as a result, new forms of idea development are also developing. Through a Corporate Challenge, companies, research institutions, incubators or accelerators want to specifically discover and promote innovations. The competitions vary depending on the industry and the specific needs of the organizing companies, but frequent topics include novel products and services, sustainability, digital transformation or even social issues.

What are Corporate Challenges?

Corporate Challenges are often also referred to as "Innovation Challenges" or "Corporate Innovation Challenges". In these "competitions" companies make specific innovation needs visible in order to discover external, innovative solutions and make them usable for themselves. In contrast to "Startup Challenges" the group of participants in a Corporate Challenge is broader. Not only entrepreneurs and startups, i.e. young companies that must not be older than ten years, can apply, but also established companies and the general public. Corporate Challenges can also be announced within a company. Corporate groups in particular use internal challenges to make new impulses, ideas and solutions visible within the company and to promote an open culture of innovation. There are also "innovation contests" where companies mainly act as sponsors for accelerators or incubators. In contrast to corporate challenges, longer-term collaboration is more in the background there.


What are the benefits of Corporate Challenges?

Corporate Challenges promote the innovation landscape by inviting other companies to jointly develop new ideas, technologies and solutions for interesting topics. The following applies here: the more specifically the innovation problem is formulated, the more suitable the solutions submitted will be. Of course, large search fields can also be selected in order to obtain as many different perspectives and heterogeneous impulses on a topic as possible. Moreover, the application process should be streamlined and not require page-long letters. In addition, it is important to make as many potential participants aware of the Challenge as possible in a short period of time. If you are currently hosting a Corporate Challenge, you are welcome to enter it in our form to publish it for free on startup-challenges.com. Corporate Challenges quickly identify appropriate solutions in the marketplace and allow companies and researchers to co-innovate with leading corporations and government organizations. Following the Challenge, the ideas are further developed, tested and brought to market together using the synergies that arise.

You still have questions?

Reach out to us, we are happy to help and answer your questions with regards to startup challenges and the cooperation with startups:

Client Portal | Internal Tools | Web App Builder | Free Website Builder Made with Softr