MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Break Out to Open Innovation

Mercedes-Benz AG produces over 2 million passenger cars annually for a global market in the throes of transformation. Automakers are meeting new demands for electrification and connectivity, new competitors are arising, and customers have new expectations, such as the desire for sustainable mobility. All of these trends are driving the need to speed innovation in every facet of the automotive industry.

In 2016, R&D and digital business managers at Mercedes’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, realized that their efforts to collaborate with startups — a valuable source of external innovation — were being hampered by the company’s existing innovation processes. Those processes were overly focused on internal development and ready-to-implement solutions provided by the company’s established base of suppliers and weren’t well suited to uncertainty-ridden collaborations with promising technology startups. The company needed an innovation pathway capable of more effectively integrating startups earlier in the R&D process and significantly reducing the time required to identify, develop, test, and implement their most promising technologies and solutions.

About the Author

Denis Bettenmann is project manager of Startup Autobahn for Mercedes-Benz AG and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Stuttgart. Ferran Giones (@fgiones) is deputy head of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science at the University of Stuttgart. Alexander Brem (@alexanderbrem) is the Endowed Chaired Professor of Entrepreneurship in Technology and Digitalization and director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Science at the University of Stuttgart. Philipp Gneiting is head of open innovation and Startup Autobahn at Mercedes-Benz AG.

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