Roulette for corporate innovation
Corporate innovation teams are measured on finding the collaborations nobody else spotted. The hard part is not running the process; it is widening the search beyond the same handful of partners everyone in your industry already talks to.
The corporate innovation partner-discovery problem
Most partner shortlists are drawn from the networks you already have: the suppliers you buy from, the startups in your accelerator, the names that come up at the same three conferences. That keeps you inside your own industry, where assets overlap and the upside is incremental. The genuinely valuable moves tend to sit one or two industries away, where a complementary asset can combine with yours to create something neither side could build alone. Those pairings are exactly the ones a like-for-like search never surfaces.
Why cross-industry pairings work for innovation teams
- Complementary, not overlapping: a partner from a different sector brings assets you do not already have in-house, so the combination adds capability rather than duplicating it.
- Defensible by default: a cross-industry collaboration is harder for a same-sector competitor to copy, because it depends on a relationship outside their line of sight.
- Better board narratives: an unexpected but well-argued pairing is more memorable in a stage-gate review than yet another adjacent bolt-on.
Example moves
A retail bank x a language-learning app
Habit-forming engagement mechanics applied to long-term saving behaviour.
An insurer x a consumer wearable
Continuous behavioural data feeding prevention, pricing and engagement.
A logistics operator x a computer-vision startup
Existing physical footprint made measurably more efficient by new perception tech.
How the roulette helps
- Feed in your company (or a business unit) and get a cross-industry partner with a written rationale in seconds.
- Each result includes five concrete collaboration opportunities and five next steps, which is enough to pressure-test internally before you commit time.
- Use it to break a brainstorm out of its rut, or to seed a partner long-list you can then qualify properly.
Related
Find a partner for corporate innovation teams
Feed in a company and let the roulette surface a cross-industry match in seconds. If one sparks something real, you can take it further.