1M/1M Facilitating Corporate Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Of late, you have seen a lot of corporate partnership announcements from 1M/1M, and you will be seeing many more as we go along. I want to provide an overview of our experience working with various corporate partners, and some of the thinking behind these partnerships.

At this point of evolution in our industry, we know for a fact that enterprises of all sizes need to have a strategy for engaging with the innovation and entrepreneurship eco-systems within their respective domains. Some companies do this through corporate venture capital, some through specific incubation and acceleration programs, and some by partnering with various eco-system players. Internally, ideas are solicited and often rewarded with funding to develop further.

In 1M/1M, we are seeing corporate partners have the following needs:

(1) Contests, followed by ongoing, scalable incubation support: Pitch fests and business plan competitions have become a common way for corporations and communities to drum up interest in entrepreneurship and innovation around the world. However, there is a gap in ongoing incubation support which 1M/1M fills. This is the basis of many of our partnerships. In such circumstances, the corporations award scholarships to 1M/1M premium to a set of entrepreneurs whom we incubate through the program.

(2) Culture change: Large organizations often find themselves in complacent moods. Malaise sets in. Innovation disappears. We’re seeing some of our corporate partners use contests + 1M/1M scholarships to rejuvenate the energy level within their organizations. Ideas are solicited. Winners get 1M/1M scholarships and other support (including financial, channel access, etc. in some cases).

(3) Monetizing reach: Some of our partners have access to very large numbers of customers / eyeballs. However, their current business models and product portfolios are not monetizing the reach adequately. By incubating promising ideas with interesting business models, these companies aim to enhance their revenue levels. In such circumstances, 1M/1M is shepherding scholarship winning entrepreneurs through the early validation process, and a subset of these entrepreneurs who show the most promise are being selected for revenue-sharing channel partnerships with our corporate partners.

(4) Sharing in success: Some of our corporate partners make money off commissions on revenue generated by their (small business) customers. It is in their interest to see the revenue levels of their customers rise, so that their own revenue levels rise as well. Thus, it makes sense for them to award 1M/1M scholarships to their customers, to help them grow.

(5) Platforms, APIs, Apps: The trend in the market is definitely to create platforms, open up APIs, and drum up developers to build apps on that platform, using the API. We see interest from corporate partners to incubate developers and entrepreneurs to build businesses to expand their eco-systems using 1M/1M.

(6) Supporting entrepreneurs: Finally, corporations that target small businesses as a market are using 1M/1M scholarships as a way of further developing their brand presence within the entrepreneurship segment.

If your company would like to explore corporate innovation & entrepreneurship in partnership with 1M/1M, please contact us anytime.