Gorillas Can Dance. Shameen Prashantham

FOREWORD

      I have been an entrepreneur for my entire life. After a few successes and a failure, I started to invest in early-stage startups. We became frustrated with the investment process, which we felt was especially detrimental to entrepreneurs. Out of that frustration we founded Techstars in 2006 and we created a better business model for entrepreneurs, investors, corporations, and communities.

      In the Techstars model we take a cohort of 10 startup entrepreneurs who come together under one roof for three months to develop their concept, receive guidance and mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs, and refine their product and business model to pitch to investors. We coined the term “accelerator” and today Techstars has replicated that first accelerator in Boulder, Colorado, to nearly 50 geographic locations, across multiple verticals, and in partnership with some of the largest corporations in the world.

I provide this short history of Techstars not as a tribute to what we've accomplished but as a point in the timeline of Shameen's inspiring book that you now hold in your hands. Professor Prashantham began his journey documenting corporate-startup partnering in 2003 when Microsoft was first understanding disruption to its business model. Technology companies like Microsoft and others were vulnerable to “two people in a garage somewhere” inventing a technology that would make them irrelevant.

      Companies outside of technology – manufacturers, distributors, or retailers, for example – would appear (in 2003) to be immune from business model disruption from startups but as Shameen clearly demonstrates, all global corporations face an imperative to innovate. As retired CEO of Ford, Mark Fields said, “When I first joined the company, a long time ago, we were a manufacturing company. As we go forward, I want us to be known as a manufacturing, a technology, and an information company.… That's where we're heading.”

      Today, while it's largely understood that every corporation must somehow become innovative and entrepreneurial, there's not as much understanding about how to do that. Part of the difficulty in partnering between startups and corporations is figuring out what to do: Do you buy a technology? Create an accelerator within your company? Develop a presence in entrepreneurial hotspots like Silicon Valley? Or deploy scouting teams in other entrepreneurial hotspots throughout the world? All of these tactics have been tried, but what will work for your company and how can you make it happen? More importantly, how can you get your leadership team to be on the same page? Gorillas Can Dance provides an excellent overview, with relevant case studies and examples, that will help gain alignment from leadership and management on corporate-startup partnering.

But part of the problem in partnering stems from very real obstacles in mindset, operating procedures, and resources that corporations and startups have within their DNA. A result of these obstacles is that corporations often view startups as risky – will the startup deliver on their commitment or will they just be a distraction? And for the startups, the questions about working with corporations are equally vexing – Can they trust the corporation to not take advantage of them?

      Fortunately, for both startups and corporations, Shameen has spent the better part of the past two decades interviewing managers in a wide range of companies in China, India, Israel, Kenya, South Africa, United Kingdom, the United States, and other locations to provide more than imperatives and obstacles. The game-changer in creating corporate-startup partnerships that matters, that makes an impact, is the mindset of participants: entrepreneurial, collaborative, and global.

Professor Prashantham has effectively articulated what we experience and have understood at Techstars: it's not enough to understand that corporations and startups can partner to accelerate innovation, nor is it enough to understand the challenges and obstacles that make partnering difficult. The key is the mindset of the individual. Are you open to new ideas from diverse people, from diverse cultures? Are you willing to make sacrifices in personal or corporate gain to achieve a greater vision? Do you see the world as a blank canvas waiting for your creativity and potential to expressed? The mindset is about choosing authentic engagement with others in a way that provides hope for the future.

      I believe we are in the very early stages of harnessing the ways in which entrepreneurship can be applied to global problems. It requires partnering between corporations, startups, communities, governments, nonprofits, universities, and a multitude of organizations. With the insights of Gorillas Can Dance, we now have a roadmap to help. As Shameen concludes, “Who knows? Perhaps working together may become so commonplace that a time will come when not many will need to be reminded of its potential, or even schooled in the nuances of the process.”

      David Cohen

      Co-founder and Chairman, Techstars