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Nesta is on the hunt for Europe's most 'startup-friendly' corporate firms

UK innovation foundation Nesta and advisory firm Mind the Bridge have begun their search for the most ‘startup-friendly’ corporates on the continent as part of their annual 25 Corporate Startup Stars initiative.

Taking place under the European Commission’s Startup Europe Partnership, the scheme serves to recognise larger companies which have pioneered efforts to establish partnerships with the startup community, including direct investment, favourable procurement terms, accelerators and similar programmes.

The pair are crowdsourcing nominations from startups, scaleups, supporting organisations and mentors, for corporates who they believe fit the bill and who will be in with a chance of following in the footsteps of last year’s winners Cisco.

An expert panel that includes angel investor and Scale-up Report author Sherry Coutu, will then sift through the nominees before deciding on the final rankings which will be revealed in the Autumn.

Chris Haley, who is Head of Startups and New Technology Research at Nesta, commented: “Collaboration between corporates and startups, if done right, can bring tremendous benefit to both.

“Startups can access invaluable resources and market insight which can help them scale, whilst for established companies, such collaborations offer an important mode of innovation - as well as subtler benefits like cultural change.

“However, it is hard to get it right. We believe that the organisations doing this well should be recognised as trailblazers, and hope that they inspire others to follow suit.”

Andrus Ansip, Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, European Commission, added: “Cooperation between corporates and startups speeds up new business models and innovation. It is a key action to strengthen our ecosystem.

“Europe’s 25 Corporate Startup Stars is an inspiring European step forward. Celebrate successes, embrace failures; let’s speed up the learning curve on a bigger scale.”

Those wishing to submit their nominations have until Wednesday 12 April to do so.

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