Future-Proofing Corporate Innovation: Strategies for 2025 and Beyond

Why Corporate Innovation Needs a New Playbook in 2025

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In today’s climate of accelerating disruption, from economic instability to geopolitical tensions and rapid technological change, corporate innovation strategies must evolve. Traditional R&D models and linear innovation pipelines are no longer sufficient. The pace of change has outstripped the capacity of conventional corporate structures to respond effectively. Innovation today must be fast, interconnected, and adaptive.

Progressive organizations are realizing that innovation is not confined to a single department, it is a core capability. It must be embedded across teams, supported by leadership, and reinforced by systems that reward exploration over efficiency.

According to the World Economic Forum, the most innovative companies are no longer relying on centralized R&D alone but are reinventing how they manage talent, measure success, and embed innovation across business functions. These leaders treat innovation as a strategic system, not a siloed initiative, with top-performing firms actively decentralizing decision-making and integrating innovation KPIs across departments¹.

As we look ahead to 2025 and beyond, this article explores three pillars of future-proof innovation: open collaboration, AI-enabled intelligence, and flexible frameworks aligned with evolving metrics and expectations.

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Embracing Open Innovation to Navigate Uncertainty

Open innovation is becoming essential in a global environment marked by complexity and uncertainty. Unlike traditional innovation models that rely primarily on internal R&D, open innovation draws on ideas, technologies, and partnerships from external sources, including startups, research institutions, and even competitors.

Why now? Economic uncertainty, shifting trade policies, and fragmented supply chains have exposed the limitations of siloed innovation models. Open innovation introduces agility by enabling companies to testmultiple solutions in parallel, access emerging technologies earlier, and shorten time-to-market.

Effective partnership modalities include:

• Venture Clienting, where corporates become early customers of startups
• As Go To Market partners, where the corporate and startup collaborate to bring a jointly developed product to market
• Strategic co-creation through pilots and joint IP development

Continental, for example, exemplifies open innovation through co-pace², which co-create solutions with startups in smart mobility and sustainability. These labs accelerate testing and integration of external technologies by reducing development cycles and increasing market responsiveness. Likewise, Meraxis, a Swiss polymer distributor, has partnered with Singapore-based startup Polymerize to build a digital R&D platform using AI to optimize material formulations. This digitized a manual process, reduced time-to-market, and enabled more customized solutions for clients³.

These examples highlight how strategic startup collaboration helps large companies accelerate innovation, tap into niche expertise, and remain resilient amid economic and supply chain shocks.

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AI-Enabled Innovation Scouting:Speed Meets Precision

Manual trend scouting and startup engagement are no longer viable in an era of exponential information growth. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is transforming how companies identify trends, evaluate startups, and place strategic bets.

AI-driven scouting platforms can:

• Scan vast datasets, patents, news feeds, and academic papers
• Spot weak signals before they become mainstream
• Predict startup success using a mix of public and proprietary data, such as founding team backgrounds, funding milestones, and market traction

Predictive analytics tools can also assess a startup’s potential by analyzing founding team experience, funding trajectory, and market momentum.These capabilities help innovation teams move with speed and confidence, especially when operating in unfamiliar markets or exploring new technological domains.

At Start2 Group, a proprietary AI-enabled platform combines a global startup database with innovation management tools. This integration allows corporate clients to tailor their scouting efforts to strategic priorities. This is particularly useful in sectors where time-to-market and technology fit are critical, such as advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and clean technologies.

An example of this in practice is the partnership between Meraxis,a Swiss polymer distributor, and Singapore-based startup Polymerize⁴. Enabled through Start2 Group’s Open Innovation program, the collaboration matched Meraxis with a startup capable of digitizing and optimizing its R&D workflows through AI. The resulting platform reduced development time and improved formulation precision, accelerating Meraxis’ innovation cycle in a highly competitive market.

Start2Group also provides hands-on support to help clients configure their scouting approach, conduct deep-dive analyses, and build strategic startup portfolios. Meraxis’ partnership with Polymerize was enabled through the Open Innovation program, through which Start2 Group works closely with corporate clients to match them with innovative companies like Polymerize to accelerate pilot launches, and de-risk expansion into new innovation areas⁴.

But even with powerful tools and promising leads, the journey doesn't end at pilot launch. One of the common challenges in open innovation is the difficulty of moving beyond Proof of Concept (PoC). Start2 Group addresses this by offering downstream support that includes early stakeholder alignment with senior management and relevant BUs, pilot design for scalability, and structured engagement planning with the startup. This approach helps bridge the gap between discovery and implementation, ensuring that high-potential innovations identified throughAI-driven scouting are set up for long-term success.

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Building Smarter InnovationFrameworks with Generative AI

To truly future-proof innovation, companies must move beyond tools and reimagine how innovation frameworks are structured, implemented, and measured. Generative AI is playing a critical role here. GenAI is being integrated into innovation management systems to:

• Draft business model canvases, pitch decks, and technical documentation
• Simulate user journeys and market reactions
• Co-create design and engineering solutions with internal teams and startups

This enables teams to move faster from idea to prototype, and from prototype to validation. GenAI also enhances learning velocity by enabling rapid iteration and insight generation. Importantly, it supports the development of more responsive innovation metrics, ones that measure adaptability, collaboration quality, and portfolio learning.

Examples of these metrics include:

• Adaptability: how quickly a team can pivot based on new insights or constraints.
• Collaboration quality: measured through participation rates, cross-functional engagement, and feedback loops across teams and partners.
• Portfolio learning: tracking insights and validated learnings across experiments, not just outcomes, to build long-term innovation capabilities.

Organizations that integrate generative AI into their frameworks will be better positioned to shift from ad-hoc pilots to repeatable innovation systems. For instance, Schneider Electric has begun embedding generative AI into internal innovation sprints to improve decision-making and cross-functional collaboration. The company has introduced Jo-Chat GPT, a conversational assistant based onMicrosoft Azure OpenAI Service, which allows employees to securely access generative AI capabilities. Another tool, the Finance Advisor, enables analysts to retrieve financial data quickly and consistently, enhancing the quality of business decisions⁵. These use cases reflect how generative AI can empower innovation teams to be more productive, responsive, and aligned with strategic goals.

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From Defensive to Proactive:Future-Proofing Innovation at Scale

Many corporate innovation strategies today are defensive, reacting to market threats or attempting to digitize legacy models. Future-proofing requires a shift to proactive innovation that drives growth, opens new markets, and shapes the future.

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What does proactive innovation look like?

• It anticipates change through robust trend sensing and foresight
• It places bold bets on emerging domains, even before they’re fully understood
• It institutionalizes startup collaboration and ecosystem engagement
• It redefines success metrics around learning velocity, resilience, and market leadership, such as the number of hypotheses tested per innovation sprint, or the success rate of pilots transitioning to full-scale deployments.

To enable this, leaders must:

• Conduct innovation maturity audits to identify capability gaps
• Develop a house view of strategic bets, combining core, adjacent, and breakthrough innovation
• Establish a proactive innovation scorecard to measure impact
• Ensure innovation has board-level visibility and sponsorship

This mindset shift also demands strong storytelling, communicating the "why" behind innovation initiatives. It requires shaping an innovation identity that resonates across teams and aligns with company values.In fact, the World Economic Forum highlights that proactive innovators are distinguished not just by the volume of innovations but by the systems they create to sustain them. Leading firms implement “dual operating systems”, one for current business and one for experimentation, and have leaders who champion learning velocity and innovation readiness as board-level priorities¹.

Companies like BMW and Samsung have embraced this transformation.BMW’s Startup Garage acts as a venture client unit that integrates startup tech into BMW’s supply chain early on⁶. Samsung, ranked sixth in theWorld Economic Forum's list of most innovative companies, is known for its heavy investment in R&D and its consistent push to commercialize emerging technologies across sectors, reinforcing a culture of innovation⁷.

By institutionalizing innovation structures, these firms embed a culture of exploration, backed by agile processes and cross-functional incentives that reward risk-taking and experimentation.

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Let’s Build the Future, Together

The future belongs to companies that innovate consistently, collaboratively, and daringly. Whether you're looking to launch an open innovation platform, embed AI into your scouting process, or redefine your internal frameworks, the time to act is now.

Contact us to explore how we can co-create a strategy that not only prepares you for the future, but positions you to lead it.

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This article was developed as part of Corporate Launchpad 3.0, a corporate venturing program by EDB New Ventures designed to empower companies to drive deeper innovation through venture creation and startup partnerships. Start2Group is proud to be an appointed Partner of the program.

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Sources

1. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/03/best-companies-innovate-reinvent-how-they-manage
2. https://www.co-pace.com/  
3. https://www.meraxis-group.com/en/company/news-press/meraxis-partners-with-ai-start-up-polymerize
4. https://www.start2.group/open-innovation
5. https://www.se.com/ww/en/about-us/newsroom/news/press-releases/schneider-electric-drives-generative-ai-productivity-and-sustainability-solutions-by-integrating-microsoft-azure-openai-6551d3eacbbacd6fa60f2b03
6. https://www.bmwstartupgarage.com/
7. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/07/innovative-companies-rank-2021/

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