December 17, 2021 — For the second time in a row, SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) was recognized with the annual Corporate Startup Stars Award 2021 as one of the Top 25 companies to encourage startup innovation.
In addition, SAP was again honored with the Corporate Startup Accelerator Award for its efforts in accelerating and working with startups. On December 16, the International Chamber of Commerce and innovation advisory firm Mind the Bridge announced this year’s winners at the award ceremony in Paris.
SAP follows a holistic open innovation approach by driving both organic and startup innovation to remain a resilient player in today’s global marketplace and deliver new innovation to customers. With its strategic business unit SAP.iO, SAP supports early-stage ventures to accelerate new ideas inside and outside the company.
“We see ourselves as the matchmakers between startups on the one side and SAP customers on the other.” said Alexa Gorman, Senior Vice President and Global Head of SAP.iO Foundries & Intrapreneurship. “This recognition validates our open innovation approach to work closely with promising, diverse startups and bring additional innovation to our customers.”
Since 2016, the Corporate Startup Stars Awards have celebrated companies that are role models in open innovation and are strongly committed to working with startups. Therefore, the startups nominate the corporates they believe to be most active in terms of open innovation themselves.
“Consistently over the past years, SAP confirmed to be among the world’s corporates that are more effective in turning open innovation into results,” said Alberto Onetti, Chairman of Mind the Bridge. “SAP engages with global startups in multiple ways, ranging from acceleration and partnerships to investments and acquisitions. We specifically appreciated SAP’s approach and particularly its recent evolutions. The SAP.iO Intrapreneurship program and SAP.iO Venture Studio are an interesting benchmark as well as the way SAP evolved and optimized its corporate startup accelerator.”
About SAP.iO
SAP.iO delivers new partnerships and products for SAP by accelerating and scaling startup innovation as well as incubating employee ventures. SAP.iO brings together innovators from every region, industry, and line of business to transform how businesses run. Since 2017, SAP.iO has helped 330+ external startups and internal ventures accelerate their growth while enabling thousands of SAP customers to access innovation. For more information, visit https://sap.io/.
