The lecture is intended to expose corporate leaders to the importance of collaboration with startups and other external entities, such as academia and other corporations, in order to enable corporations to keep up with technological changes. The lecture exposes the corporate representatives to what happened to corporations who failed to keep up with changes (IE. Thomas Cook, Nokia, Agfa and others), under the clear message that “what was – will not continue”, meaning that organizations must move forward, change and adapt in order to keep up the rapid technological change. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the majority of industries have been changing. The current crisis has acted as a catalyst and greatly accelerated the digital transformation in these industries. Internal innovation departments simply do not have the tools, nor the ability to survive in this changing world without the assistance of external actors, and most important among them are startups.
