Cooperation between established corporate companies and start-ups : Gaining innovation power from start-ups’ digital-driven logistics innovation

Innovation power is essential for long-term survival in the competitive environment of a corporate and can often only be increased through cooperation. It is therefore crucial for management and researchers to know the most important factors influencing the increase of this power and the effects of the form of cooperation on it. Especially in the field of digitization, many corporates still lack experience, especially in how to cooperate with start-up companies to achieve effective digital innovations. This thesis identifies digital-driven logistics innovation used by corporates and their most important impact factors as well as forms of cooperation between the start-ups who invented those and corporates who are using them for improvement of their own innovation power. Therefore, qualitative interviews were conducted at management level, with large established manufacturing companies and logistics service providers (LSPs) from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Switzerland. The empirical findings show that the influencing variables application area and purpose, logistics activity, size, industry, digital experience, and cooperation experience are the most important factors. They also reveal that within the context of digital-driven logistics innovation, the cooperation between start-ups and the applied form of cooperation could influence the innovation output. The type of innovation is influencing the innovation power and slightly influences the type of cooperation. The cooperation form influences the innovation output as well. However, different results may be obtained for individual cases and companies, especially in the comparison between manufacturing companies and LSPs. Managers of established corporate companies can use these results to identify the best possible form of cooperation with start-ups for future decisions on cooperation to achieve digital-driven logistics innovation