Marc Wouters

2017

Corporations have never been endangered more than by the continual disruption of the 21st century. Especially large organizations currently struggle with a rapidly transforming environment fueled by innovative business models overtaking themselves. Conclusively large organizations are dependent on innovation spurring methods. The literature has identified lean start-up methods as the most promising anchor. Therefore, this paper sets out to validate the implementation of lean start-up methods within a large organization by conducting a case study at the Bosch Group with solely intra-enterprise customers. Out of a broad vision a business model just short of receiving funding and being further developed by the Bosch Group has been evolved. The paper reveals that the individual lean start-up methods are also powerful in a large corporation. As the existing cohesive process model was not entirely practicable, the paper provides a validated practicable model. Further, the paper uncovers that an innovation process by a lean start-up acting within a large corporation can be very successful and superior to a large corporation’s standard, due to the fruitful symbiosis of a large corporation and a lean start-up, as long as the large corporation’s lengthy decision-making processes don’t come into play. Moreover, the paper detects further benefits for the large corporation on top of the lean start-up’s business model.