A comprehensive corporate or enterprise innovation strategy or programme can be as varied as the companies that use them. They can be tailored to unique needs, vision, and business outcomes. Services within a corporate or enterprise innovation programme could be:

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• Open innovation strategy development: This could look like defining the strategic vision for innovation partnerships, developing and prioritising your roadmap, or aligning with available resources and capacity.
• Ecosystem & partnership building: This type of programme helps expand your external collaborations, connecting you with universities, startups, research centres, and investors.
• Innovation lab / incubator setup: This is a unique offering where we can provide physical or virtual space, prototyping infrastructure, tools, and resources to test ideas and work alongside innovators.
• Workshops & training: This style of innovation programme involves design thinking, lean startup, agile methodology, open innovation, business model innovation.
• Idea sourcing & screening: This involves running ideation sessions, challenge programs, open calls or crowdsourcing from internal teams or external startups.
• Co‑creation & prototyping: Whether building proof of concept (PoC) and minimum viable products (MVPs), or running pilot projects.
• Mentorship, coaching & expert network access: This type of programme pairs teams with mentors, domain experts, or startup‑partners.
• Governance, metrics & reporting: This could include setting success metrics, KPIs, regular progress reviews, and steering committees.
• Change management & culture change: This style of programme involves shifting internal culture, training leadership, communication, as well as internal incentives and recognition.
• Ongoing support & scaling: This is a popular option helping successful innovations scale or embed into the business, post‑programme mentorship.

Plus X Innovation has a strong track record of over a decade working alongside corporates, with our inaugural CRL Accelerator programme and landlord partnership. 

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Innovation can help with corporate and social responsibility because innovation and entrepreneurship is at the heart of problem solving. It's all too easy to underestimate the power of new ways of thinking when taking on the environmental and social challenges important to your mission. Yet whether you are developing new models of production, using technology to better track ESG data and provide supply chain transparency, or partnering with innovators developing new solutions around NetZero and human health, innovation and fresh ideas can help you meet your ESG goals.

When selecting an innovation partner, you want to find someone who can complement your work and resources, de-risk your growth and help you to achieve new heights. You should consider some of the following for a strong partnership which will benefit you:

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• Track record & proof: Look for case studies or examples of past programmes, in similar industries, where results (ROI, impact, speed) are shown.
• Methodology & frameworks: Does the partner use proven methods like design thinking, lean startup, agile development, or open innovation? Are they flexible in adapting to your context?
• Industry expertise: Partners who understand your sector or have links to it (finance, manufacturing, tech, healthcare, etc.) will move faster and deliver more relevant results.
• Ecosystem & network: Having strong external links to startups, universities, investors, mentors can unlock more innovation opportunities and drive your project forward.
• Cultural fit & ability to drive change: Innovation programmes require internal buy‑in; partners who can help with leadership, change management, internal alignment will be much more effective.
• Governance, measurement, and transparency: What KPIs do they track? How do they ensure accountability and show progress to leadership?
• Speed to launch & cost effectiveness: How quickly can they get started? What is the investment required? How do they manage risk?
• Sustainability & scaling: Can they find a compliment to your internal capacity that will help you scale? Do they offer ongoing support?

These are just a few things to look out for so you choose a partner that delivers real innovation, not just 'innovation theatre'. Often candid conversations with potential innovation partners will reveal whether it is a good fit.

Open innovation is when companies use external ideas and technologies to accelerate the innovation efforts of their internal organisation. This could look like finding a startup with a solution to your challenge, or making progress on a problem with a university partner. Collaborating through open innovation is a way to get a broader array of technology, expertise, and knowledge to make significant strides on projects and blockers.

To tackle today’s biggest challenges, enterprises and corporates need more than ideas. They need access, capability, and action.

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Plus X Innovation are an open innovation specialist, connecting key players in the innovation system together - startups, scaleups, universities, community networks, and government - in a connected, high-impact open innovation ecosystem, built to drive meaningful change.

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Across our innovation hubs, active communities of innovators work alongside prototyping labs and technology demonstrators - giving corporates access to solutions, experiments, and emerging technologies they would not otherwise have and allows them to cultivate long-term, high-value networks that extend beyond transactional partnerships

At Plus X Innovation, we tailor our approach to each company’s needs, combining proven methodologies to ensure the right outcomes. Some of the approaches we commonly use include:

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• Design Thinking: This is to empathise with users, identify unmet needs, ideate, prototype, and test early.
• Lean Startup: Where we build MVPs, iterate quickly, validate assumptions with real users, and reduce waste.
• Sprints: We run short, focused sessions to generate ideas, test solutions, and accelerate decision-making.
• Open Innovation: We bring in external ideas, startups, research partners, and challenge programs to source solutions beyond the organisation.
• Business Model Innovation: Explore new revenue streams, cost models, and services, not just new products.
• Futures Thinking & Horizon Scanning: We anticipate emerging trends, technological shifts, and prepare for disruption.
• Stage Gate / Portfolio Management: Assess and manage multiple innovation initiatives, balancing risk versus reward.

We mix and match these approaches depending on your sector, challenge, and pace of innovation. For example, in regulated industries we emphasise rigorous validation and governance, while in fast-moving tech sectors we often deploy sprints to accelerate testing and validation of ideas.