Organizing an Innovation Ecosystem by Integrating Customers and Start-Ups: The NTT-Data Open Innovation Contest Case

This document focuses on the role of start-ups as partners of large organizations in Open Innovation projects and how their innovative potential can be exploited by facilitating their collaboration with the end customer in B2B contexts. We analyze the case of NTT-Data Italia, a company that faces the challenge of the continuous changes in the market, by launching an Open Innovation Contest: a large international event in which customers are involved and invited to submit their needs while innovative solutions are proposed by start-ups. At the end of the Contest, according to the slogan “Triple Win”, a collaboration is started with three main actors: NTT-Data, the winning start-up and the customer, that leads to the implementation of the idea, starting from the realization of a Proof of Concept. The previously described models of collaboration between corporations and start-ups in the B2B sector mostly involve two actors. In this emergent approach here analyzed the actors are three: the corporation plays an innovative intermediary role among start-ups and its customers. Customers are helped to solve their problem by involving start-ups capable of introducing new and state-of-the-art elements. Start-ups are helped to focus their energies on truly attractive projects by supporting market entry and access to capital, which are their typical weaknesses. This emerging approach enriches the picture of possible types of collaboration among start-ups and large corporations.