For the sixth year running, startups have nominated the corporate organisations they believed to be most active in terms of open innovation for the prestigious annual Corporate Startup Stars Awards. Launched by Mind the Bridge under the European Commission’s Startup Europe Partnership initiative in 2016, the Awards have been scaled at global level thanks to a partnership with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).
In total, 50 companies, located in every region of the world have been recognized for their work: 25 as Global Corporate Startup Stars and 25 as Global Open Innovation Challengers. Along with Huawei, companies named in the 2021 Top25 Global Corporate Startup Stars are: AB InBev, Allianz, Aramco, AXA, BNP Paribas, Bosch, BP, Enel, Engie, Haier, Hyundai, Iberdrola, KDDI, Mastercard, National Grid, Nestlé, Orange, Pfizer, Samsung, SAP, Schneider Electric, Sodexo, Telefónica and Xiaomi.
Alberto Onetti, Chairman of Mind the Bridge, commented, “We recognized Huawei’s effort in working with startups, and in particular its Ecosystem approach that takes into consideration the ‘give’ as much as the ‘take’. In fact, Huawei makes use of its CLOUD infrastructure and of its Huawei Mobile Services to support startups’ growth, the development of new products, and the expansion to new markets, while taking advantage of being close to countless cloud-native, AI, big data, and other hi-tech startups.”
“34 years ago, Huawei opened with just 5,000 dollars in registered capital. At that time, we luckily benefited from the generosity of other major companies who were willing to take a chance on a newcomer. So it is no surprise that we have wanted to do our part and pass this warmth and support on to more startups today,” Catherine Chen, President of the Public Affairs and Communications Department at Huawei, said.
“We believe this idea of paying it forward is important for healthy ecosystem development. For example, in France, our Digital InPulse program has helped more than 80 startups break into the international market over the last eight years. Together with initiatives like our Shining Star program and the Huawei Developer Program designed for individual developers, we want to increase the number of startups in the market and support individual entrepreneurs and developers.”
Tony Jin Yong, Huawei Chief Representative to the EU Institutions, said, “Huawei supports both open innovation and SMEs in Europe. Our 23 different research centres in Europe collaborate quite strongly with the SME sector. As a company, we support strong open source governance structures as an ideal way to develop shared technologies.”
