Why should Incumbent Firms jump on the Start-up Bandwagon in the Digital Era? - A Qualitative Study

Due to ongoing digitalization, the traditional business models of incumbent firms are threatened by the innovation performance of start-ups. Therefore, a few incumbent firms have established programs to collaborate with start-ups in order to receive relevant impulses from them. However, empirically, there has barely been any insight into the specific role that start-ups play for incumbent firms. For this purpose, we present the key findings of our qualitative study, which has been built on interviews (n=35) with experts. Our results reveal that incumbent firms and start-ups have equally environmental factors affecting their decision-making in pursuit of digitalization. However, they differ in their technological and organizational factors. According to our findings, we have emphasized that collaboration between incumbent firms and start-ups could be an opportunity to meet the challenges of the digital era. They can build on these identified enabling factors of the partner and overcome their own inhibiting factors.