Bernhard Schambeck is head of the BMW Startup Garage, the company’s own venture client unit. In this blog post, he talks about why startups are so important for the BMW Group and what is unique about the BMW Startup Garage’s approach.
Startups have a tremendous capacity for innovation – as the facts confirm: In 2018, a total of 230 billion US dollars’ worth of risk capital was invested in startup companies worldwide. There are currently around 1.6 million tech start-ups around the globe. Of course, the BMW Group has always brought strong innovations to the road. But in these changing times for our industry, it would be frankly irresponsible to rely on our own innovative capabilities alone.
Since 2015, the BMW Startup Garage has forged a link between the BMW Group’s specialist divisions and startups. We seek out start-up innovations that deliver real benefits for our products, services, systems or processes, based on the “venture client” model. What does that mean exactly? In the early phase, startups often don’t have a marketable product. We purposely engage these young firms in this still very risky phase – hence the name “venture client”. In other words, the BMW Group becomes the startup’s customer. The startups then provide us with a functional prototype we can use to implement joint pilot projects.