European Innovation Council publishes flagship report on corporate-startup collaboration

The European Innovation Council (EIC) has released a new report titled "Unlocking Innovation through Corporate-Startup Collaboration – The EIC Corporate Partnership Programme", highlighting how partnerships between innovative startups and large corporations are driving deep tech scale-up and industrial transformation in Europe. 

The report supports the goals of the EU Startup and Scale-up Initiative and reflects the strategic direction of Mario Draghi’s 2024 report “The Future of European Competitiveness”, which emphasises the need to better connect research and innovation with market deployment. It also contributes to the European Commission’s objectives for strengthening Europe’s technological leadership and strategic autonomy. 

Scaling innovation through collaboration 

Since its launch in 2017, the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme (CPP) has enabled over 1,500 startup-corporate engagements across Europe, involving more than 120 major corporations and EIC-backed startups, resulting in more than 100 business agreements/deals. The programme provides structured matchmaking, coaching, and follow-up support to ensure meaningful and results-oriented collaboration. 

The report demonstrates how corporate-startup partnerships are instrumental in overcoming the barriers faced by deep tech companies, including high capital requirements, long time-to-market, and access to industrial infrastructure, while offering corporates early access to disruptive technologies. 

Among the key findings:  

• Effective collaboration is grounded in 4 essential pillars: strategic alignment, mutual commitment and value creation, skills, and early-stage experimentation (e.g. pilots and proofs-of-concept).
• The EIC CPP model proves more effective than traditional one-off innovation events, delivering consistent results through tailored and sustained engagement.
• In-person, single-corporate formats deliver the highest number of business deals, while online and multi-corporate formats increase reach and visibility.
• The programme achieved a 92% satisfaction rate among participating EIC companies, confirming its value in accelerating growth and partnerships. 

The report also touches upon trends and emerging models of corporate-startup collaboration, brings forward best practices in corporate venturing and showcases real case studies of successful collaborations between EIC-backed companies and major corporations.  

Expert-informed and policy-aligned 

The report has been developed by the European Innovation Council with the contribution of several leading experts and collaborators, including Dealflow.eu, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Hello Tomorrow. 

It reinforces the European Commission’s commitment to strengthening Europe’s innovation ecosystem and enabling startups and scaleups to grow into global tech leaders, core priorities of the New European Innovation Agenda and the EU competitiveness strategy. 

Download the report

About the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme 

An EIC Business Acceleration Services, the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme allows EIC-backed innovators to boost their network and do business with relevant decision-makers from the largest companies in Europe. Since 2017, the EIC Corporate Partnership Programme has organised 80 initiatives with +120 corporate partners, including ABB, Airbus, BMW, CaixaBank, CommerzBank, Enel, Ferrovial, L'Oreal, Medtronic, Neste, Roche, Saint-Gobain, Shell, Siemens Energy, Solvay or Telefonica. 

The EIC is looking for large corporations with an open innovation spirit, interested in integrating innovations coming from start-ups, scale-ups and research projects directly into their business offering, procurement and R&D activities as well as investing in highly innovative/deep tech companies. For more information, please check the open application for corporations.