What’s driving real innovation inside the world’s biggest companies? At There’s a Startup for That, we uncover the boldest ideas, toughest challenges, and smartest solutions shaping the future of business.

With our new podcast season live NOW (listen to it here), what better time to look back at the biggest lessons from past episodes?

1. Corporate Partnerships: Why Big and Small Need Each Other

📊 Asda x WhyWaste | Virgin Media O2 x AuraVision

From tackling food waste to reimagining retail, these partnerships show how corporates and startups can create real impact:

• Asda x WhyWaste (now part of Invafresh): With 1/3 of global food wasted, Asda needed a smarter way to manage product expiry. WhyWaste’s AI-powered solution automates expiry tracking, reduces manual checks, and accelerates markdowns, cutting waste while improving efficiency.

• VMO2 x AuraVision: As brick-and-mortar stores fight for relevance, VMO2 turned security cameras into AI-driven analytics tools. AuraVision’s technology helps optimise store layouts, improve customer experience, and boost sales.

Both partnerships prove that startups bring agility, corporates bring scale—together, they drive real change.

Lesson: Innovation doesn’t always come from within—sometimes, the smartest move is to tap into external expertise.

2. How Bosch Accelerates Innovation (Without Slowing Down)

🔧 OpenBosch

Startups are now the biggest source of corporate innovation, yet most large companies struggle to work with them efficiently. Bosch’s OpenBosch is changing that with venture clienting—a model where corporates become direct customers of startups instead of investing in them.

• Traditional corporate R&D is slow and expensive. OpenBosch taps into cutting-edge startup solutions without taking equity, reducing risk while accelerating adoption.
• Bosch streamlined processes to match startup speed—NDAs in two hours, pilots in weeks, not months.
• The result? Faster, cheaper, and more effective innovation.

Lesson: Speed is everything—corporates that can’t move fast enough lose the best ideas (and startups) to competitors.

3. How CCEP Ventures is Turning Startup Innovation into a Net Zero Game Changer

♻️ CCEP Ventures

For Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), sustainability isn’t a buzzword—it’s a business imperative. That’s where CCEP Ventures comes in, finding, funding, and scaling game-changing solutions to reach net zero by 2040.

One of the biggest challenges in corporate venturing? Balancing investment with strategic fit. CCEP Ventures focuses on two types of innovation:

• Accelerating Technologies – Solutions that speed up existing sustainability initiatives, such as improving recycled PET.

• Breakthrough Technologies – Long-term bets on radical solutions like direct air capture, which could turn CO₂ into beverage carbonation.

Lesson: The best corporates don’t just invest in startups—they scale them to transform entire industries.

4. The Innovation Team Driving M&S’ Innovation Engine:

🛒 M&S Innovation

For M&S, staying ahead requires constant reinvention—and that’s where the M&S Innovation team comes in.

• Instead of relying on internal R&D, the M&S Innovation team taps into the global startup ecosystem to find best-in-class solutions that have already been tested and refined.
• Every innovation serves a clear business or customer need, from reducing food waste to improving the shopping experience.
• One of the biggest challenges? Corporate teams often prefer to build rather than partner. Ignite shifts this mindset by proving that external collaboration is faster, cheaper, and more effective.

Lesson: The best corporates don’t innovate in isolation. They build strategic partnerships with the right startups.

5. Innovation with Impact: How Adecco Transformed Its Foundation into a Social Innovation Lab

🌍 Adecco Innovation Foundation

Corporate foundations have traditionally been grant-giving entities, but Adecco rewrote the playbook by evolving its foundation into a Social Innovation Lab—a hub for co-creating, testing, and scaling workforce solutions.

• Adecco shifted from traditional grant-based programs to a scan-build-scale model, ensuring solutions are tested, refined, and embedded for long-term impact.
• By working directly with NGOs, corporates, and policymakers, the Social Innovation Lab tackles real barriers to employment for underserved populations.
• Success is measured not by donations, but by real-world adoption—with initiatives designed to be spun off into businesses, governments, or non-profits.

Lesson: Corporate innovation isn’t just about profit—it’s about impact. By thinking beyond traditional structures, businesses can drive meaningful change while staying commercially relevant.

What’s Next? The Podcast is Back! 🎙️

We’ve now relaunched a whole new season and format of our podcast! Stay tuned for new episodes, fresh insights, and big conversations on how corporate leaders tackle their toughest innovation challenges.

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