Digital Innopreneurship 1: The Basics of Collaboration Between Corporates and Startups in the Digital Economy

From an overall perspective, digitalisation is generally determined by two main trends: Firstly, digital innovations, which are usually developed and brought to market by small startups in the form of new digital technologies or new digital business processes and models. The second is Digital Transformation, which usually involves large corporates digitising their existing technologies or existing business processes and models (although this can also be done innovatively). The question now, however, is how these two trends can be combined to create a new force for digital progress that would benefit both startups and corporates from a macroeconomic perspective. In this respect, the term "Digital Innopreneurship" describes the creation of a joint Digital-Innovation-Capability and Digital-Transformation-Capability of startups and corporates, which is made up of the Digital-Innovation-Strength of startups (Digital Entrepreneurship), the Digital-Transformation-Strength of corporates (Digital Intrapreneurship) and the Digital-Synergy-Strength (Digital Interpreneurship) between these two players. This article (Part 1) is intended to illustrate this and describe the potential for cooperation, while the following article (Part 2) will focus on the evaluation of cooperation.