This year, Mind the Bridge and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) consolidated a partnership to expand the Corporate Startup Startup Awards at global level. The ultimate goal is to foster corporate-startup collaborations globally, by showcasing success stories and awarding the best-in-class, thus stimulating a virtuous cycle in which every player positively influences the others.

The Corporate Startup Stars nominations resulted from the general ranking obtained by merging the quantitative and qualitative analyses of applications. As already done in the past editions, we divided the top 50 companies ranked into two main groups.
Corporate Startup Stars represent the first 25 companies in the ranking.

The Corporate Startup Stars nominations resulted from the general ranking obtained by merging the quantitative and qualitative analyses of applications. As already done in the past editions, we divided the top 50 companies ranked into two main groups.

Open Innovation Challengers represent all the remaining companies (i.e. those ranking between position 26 and 50).

The special award for Public Sector Innovation is given to recognise the efforts of public entities moving into the open innovation space

The nominee for the Internal Innovation special Award has been selected based on qualitative benchmarking to herald a new category that will be structured in the 2021 CSS application process.

Corporate Startup Accelerator Awards take into account the following parameters:

– Number of startups accelerated in the past 3 years;
– Geographic reach of the accelerator’s portfolio;
– Impact of the accelerated startups on the corporate business;
– Estimated financial return of the accelerator;
– Total package offered by the corporate to accelerated startups.

These awards do not provide any ranking. It helps highlight companies, approaches and initiatives that deserve to be recognized.

The nominee for the Venture Builder special award has been selected based on qualitative benchmarking to herald a new category that will be even more structured in the 2021 CSS application process.

The nominations for the Corporate Startup Procurement Award opened taking into account the following parameters:

– The number of startup collaborations that resulted in a buyer/vendor long-term relationships;
– The dollar amount of such collaborations;
– The scale and the impact of such procurement collaborations on the overall corporate business.

These awards do not provide any ranking. It helps highlight companies, approaches and initiatives that deserve to be recognized.

The Corporate Startup Investment Award takes into account the following parameters:

– Number of investments;
– Dollar amount of the investments;
– Estimated return on investment;
– Size and perceived relevance of the invested startups;
– Process put in place for investments: presence of a dedicated fund/CVC, a ventures team, etc.

These awards do not provide any ranking. It helps highlight companies, approaches and initiatives that deserve to be recognized.

The Corporate Startup M&A Award takes into account the following parameters:

– Number of acquisitions done;
– Total dollar amount of the acquisitions;
– Integration and synergies with the acquired startups;
– Size and perceived relevance of the invested startups.

These awards do not provide any ranking. It helps highlight companies, approaches and initiatives that deserve to be recognized.

The MidCap Startup Star Award only considers corporations with revenues below the threshold of $500M in revenues. It recognized 3 companies without providing a ranking.

The nominee for the Intrapreneurship special award has been selected based on qualitative benchmarking factoring the parameters listed below to herald a new category that will be structured in the 2021 CSS application process.

– Presence of one or more programmes dedicated to stimulating entrepreneurial attitude of employees;
– Number and size of spin-outs;
– Innovation stories reported that came from employees
– Programs dedicated to train employees on the topics of Lean Methodology, Digital Transformation, and Open Innovation.

Following the Corporate Startup Stars and the Open Innovation Challengers, Mind the Bridge then proceeded to reward the best performers across different geographies: Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Companies awarded in the top 3 positions of the ranking have not been considered for the Regional Awards.