The collaboration between start-ups and established firms is a challenge in itself. The early stage of partnership formation, the matching process, is therefore a crucial step towards a successful collaboration. For this reason, the research project INNOSTART explores the topic and results are now published in the high quality academic journal “Technology Analysis & Strategic Management” (TASM).
Last year, the former student from Munich University of Applied Sciences (MUAS, FK 09 Industrial Engineering and Management) Thomas Holzmann (NiTiM Doctoral Candidate and Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship) and Professor Dr. Klaus Sailer (CEO of Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship) together with Dr. Brendan Galbraith (University of Ulster) and Professor Dr. Bernhard Katzy (Leiden University and University BW Munich, CeTIM), organized a joint workshop on “matchmaking for collaborative innovation partnerships”.
This workshop was linked to the research project INNOSTART, which was initiated by the Strascheg Center for Entrepreneurship at the MUAS in 2010 aiming to explore the early phase of innovation partnerships between start-up firms and established companies. After passing the double blind review process of about 140 submissions, eight academic papers were invited for presentation in two workshop sessions and further 10 were short-listed. More than 50 participants joined the sessions for presentation and fruitful discussions at Leiden Centre for Innovation, in The Hague.
The special issue about „Matchmaking for Collaborative Innovation“ in Technology Analysis & Strategic Management Journal (TASM), edited by Thomas Holzmann, Klaus Sailer, Brendan Galbraith and Bernhard Katzy is based on the PhD work in the context of INNOSTART and covers the following topic:
External cooperation is seen by many to further innovation: in clusters, for open innovation, in innovation systems, or networks, just to name a few. If this is so, finding suitable partners is of strategic relevance. But our theoretical understanding of the matchmaking phenomena is limited with only few available studies and theories with little predictive value for managerial action. The aim of the special issue and workshop is to anchor matchmaking in a deeper theoretical perspective and contribute to an ongoing discussion in academia and practice. This workshop discussed theoretical and empirical contributions to further our understanding of matchmaking, its processes as well as antecedents and success factors.
The special issue is the third part of a TASM trilogy about (1) “managing open innovation in current and emerging intermediaries in the technology transfer process”, (2) “the convergence of ICT, policy, intermediaries and society for technology transfer: evidence from European innovation projects” which discussed the existence and value of innovation intermediaries with insights from public funded projects.
The third issue (3) „matchmaking for collaborative innovation“ opens up the black box of intermediation for collaborative innovation projects and presents matching mechanisms and how intermediation works in this context.
Stay tuned for the print version.
Find here further SCE publications.
For more information please contact: thomas.holzmann@sce.de