How do large corporations engage with startups? The rise of corporate service providers

Due to the emergence of the digital economy, traditional corporate entrepreneurship (CE) forms (i.e. corporate incubators, corporate venture capital, and corporate accelerators) have become too heavy and resource-consuming. As such, large corporations need to adopt a lightweight and flexible approach to access startups’ knowledge. Many of them have started outsourcing the CE service, demanding it from specialised service providers. In this study, we document the rise of this new form of CE, i.e. corporate service providers. Building from 25 interviews with managers of Plug and Play and GELLIFY, we analyze how these two types of service providers work concretely. Moreover, we discuss how they differ from traditional CE forms. Drawing on additional 17 interviews with large corporations and startups that have interacted through these service providers, we discuss how corporate service providers differ from previous traditional CE forms in facilitating the adoption of lightweight initiatives among large corporations to access startups’ knowledge. Accordingly, we provide theoretical contributions to the CE literature.