Importance of Firmographic Data in Open Innovation

Under the open innovation paradigm, companies rely primarily on startups for their external innovation strategy. However, there are new startups coming up at an ever-increasing pace in cities globally. This makes it daunting for companies to identify the most relevant startups. However, a consequence of the trends enabling this explosion of startups — digitalization and the Internet economy — is that much of the startup information is available online. Tapping this wealth of firmographic data is crucial to the success of any open innovation strategy.

The Shape of Firmographic Data

Firmographic data is largely unstructured and come from disparate sources, some of which include the following:

• Company websites: information on what the company’s solution is and, often, who they employ.
• Job portals: information on which roles the company, and its industry in general, is hiring for.
• Technology news: information on major events in the company and the market sentiment towards it.
• Social media: information on customer sentiment and demographics, the tone of their messaging, and fundraising news (in the case of startups).
• Industry databases: information on investments done or funding raised, comparison with peers, and
• Tax filings: information on financial performance and ownership status.

Firmographic data of a startup comprises dozens of data points. Some of these include its industry type, size, reach, location, annual expenditure and revenue, ownership style, and growth information. Multiply this for the millions of startups operating globally and you have hundreds of millions, if not billions, of data points on startup activity.

This is where data-driven tools like the StartUs Insights Discovery Platform speed up your startup search. By scanning through the entire startup ecosystem, it builds relations between startups and technologies to quickly identify the most relevant startups for your search.

Our startup databases capture dozens of data points on each startup.

Benefits of Firmographic Data

Data-driven Build-Buy-Partner Strategy

When you find a startup developing an innovative technology that fits your business goals, you generally have three options. Companies can build the technology in-house, work with the startup, or acquire them. Choosing one of the three relies on how mature the startups and the technologies are, among other factors. By revealing the strengths and limitations of the startup landscape, firmographic data arms innovation managers with insights necessary for data-driven decision-making.

Better Lead Generation and Scoring

A routine aspect of open innovation is to keep track of startups that fit a particular description. This could be to identify startups developing a particular technology or to scout startups for an innovation challenge. Regardless of the objective, accurate lead generation and scoring are difficult for a number of reasons. Firstly, startups often pivot fundamentally. Secondly, finding the most relevant startups requires scanning the entire startup ecosystem. Access to rich firmographic data makes it easy to use many filters as required to find exactly the kind of startups you’re looking for.

Accurate Competitor Intelligence

Startups are also your competition. Firmographic data provides detailed insights on what startups and established companies operating in your domain are working on. This is pretty exhaustive and covers not just which technologies they are advancing, but where they operate and their business models. Further, it also tracks what kind of startups other industry leaders are working with. This way, it contributes to your competitor intelligence, ensuring you always stay ahead.

Customer-centric Innovation

Firmographic data also aids in sales and marketing intelligence, particularly for B2B companies. It enables customer segmentation of the market, which enables companies to target their products and services better to their potential customers. More recently, companies are leveraging these insights to promote customer-centric innovation as well. For instance, knowing what your customers are building allows you to prepare for the tools they would need to do so. This way, firmographic data link marketing to innovation for companies who sell to companies.

Use Firmographic Data to Identify Innovations Early

A data-driven approach takes the hassle out of identifying the most relevant startups for your innovation strategy. It gives you actionable insights from billions of data points from disparate sources. Using Big Data & AI, the StartUs Insights Discovery Platform analyzes data on startups and scaleups developing emerging technologies. Depending on your innovation goals and requirements, we offer a range of deliverables:

• Technology Map: Visualizes emerging technologies and their applications in your industry of interest.
• Startup Scouting: Discover over 2,5 million startups & scaleups globally, scouting the right partners & saving you weeks of desk research.
• Startup Database: Covers hundreds of relevant startups that match your innovation goals.

Identify startup-driven innovation by leveraging the power of firmographic data.

To discover how we at StartUs Insights identify emerging startups that match your innovation agenda, get in touch today!