Disrupt Your Company

We change organizations through actions, not slide decks.

We run the training, hackathons, and incubators that turn corporate entrepreneurship from a buzzword into shipped products.

Since 2010, we’ve led 100+ corporate innovation operations for the biggest names in retail, energy, entertainment, banking, and insurance, including Nestle, Ecolab, Kaiser Permanente, T-Mobile, and NBCU.

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What Is Corporate Entrepreneurship, and Why Does It Need an Agency?

People attending a BeMyApp corporate innovation program

Corporate entrepreneurship is the practice of running startup-style programs, including training, hackathons, incubators, and accelerators, inside a large company to produce new products, skills, or business models faster than normal internal processes allow.

Most companies looking for help here end up with a traditional innovation consulting agency: workshops, a strategy deck, a set of recommendations, and then it's back to your team to actually build something. BeMyApp is different.

We're not just a digital transformation partner who hands you a roadmap and leaves; we're the team that runs the program itself, from the first training session through a shipped prototype. We've been doing this since 2012.

A Three-Step Path to Radical Corporate Innovation

Learn, prototype, and launch with one team managing the entire program.

Step 1Learn

Learning is everything. We organize in person or digital transformation programs to train your IT teams and managers, with one objective: teach them the startup mindset before they build anything.

Workshops

We create tailored workshop formats designed for your organization that work regardless of the technical skills or expertise of your teams.

Using an established network of experts, we can train your team on a specific technology, agile project management methodology, or techniques that will help them express their innovative thinking. We strive to provide hands-on experiences over theory; our approach is to bring people outside of their comfort zone and ignite true in-house innovation.

  • Technical workshop: a technical expert trains your engineers or IT team on an SDK/API, followed by a breakout session where participants get hands-on
  • Ideation session: a format designed to foster ideation, cross-pollination of ideas, and real-time pitching of new concepts

Webinars

We developed our own technology to host top-quality webinars and maximize the interactions between speakers and participants, bringing new skill sets to your organization.

Webinars have become the most scalable way to provide continuous training to teams globally. Educational sessions can be recorded and reused to onboard new stakeholders or leveraged for brand awareness. Our webinars are customized to either upskill your developers or bring your managers up to date on a specific topic.

  • 1-hour webinar led by an expert
  • Live Q&A session in a chat room at the end
  • Webinars recorded and uploaded to YouTube or your corporate website
  • Full setup and technical support by our technical team

Coding Challenges

Our coding challenges let developers gain new technical skills and compete against each other through a series of short-form challenges.

Content and challenges are built around a specific developer tool or framework. Gamification is a proven way to drive interaction among collaborators and distributed developer teams, offering short bursts of content delivered daily or weekly rather than a single long training session.

  • Creation of a dedicated online portal, fully branded and hostable on your existing platform
  • Challenges created by our technical experts or your evangelists
  • Access to an admin panel to track developers' coding journey
  • Renewable platform package, with new content provided monthly or quarterly

Step 2Prototype

Stagnation costs more than failure, so we get your hands dirty. We organize hackathons and incubators and involve your stakeholders as mentors or innovators, then incubate the strongest projects and integrate them inside your company.

Hackathons

We are the world leader in the organization of hackathons, running events from A to Z, anywhere in the world.

We create hackathon formats that cater to any of your needs and goals. We're experts in organizing external hackathons, where we mobilize our own communities of developers and startups, and unbeatable in internal hackathons, where we involve your IT teams, non-technical stakeholders, and top managers. See our full hackathon services.

  • Entire logistical production, including venue, food & drinks, technical setup, IT providers, handled by our logistics staff
  • On-site entertainment and participant management handled by our emcees
  • Deliverables also include event timing, show flow, judging process management, and mentor management
  • 1 BeMyApp senior project manager committed to the success of your event

Corporate Incubators

We launched a corporate incubation program and methodology to foster the development of a project from prototype to finalized product.

Our 8-week program is created and run by a team of startup experts with 5+ years of experience in the field. We set up an online platform and manage the progress of incubated teams daily, and recruit external mentors to provide 1:1 coaching on the technical, design, and strategic needs of participants. This program is fully applicable to internal projects led by your own stakeholders.

  • Incubation virtual platform setup, design, and online support
  • Daily/weekly follow-up and deadline management
  • Setup of coding sprints, workshops, and webinars tailored to participating teams
  • Space available, if necessary, in Paris or San Francisco

Outsourced Development

During an incubation phase, we can outsource and manage an external development agency to handle the development of a specific project.

This optional phase is used after incubation, once you've identified prototypes with real product/market fit potential and want to accelerate the development period.

  • Identification and management of a professional development agency from our network
  • Delivery of a first version after 3 weeks of development
  • Initiation of business experiments and data analysis

Reverse Mentoring Platform

We find reverse mentoring to be the most efficient way to inspire top managers, igniting their startup mindset and helping them manage projects and teams more effectively.

We set up an online platform featuring startups with high relevance to your business. Your organization's managers get exclusive access to the platform, plus a series of webinars, and can book speakers for 1:1 mentoring sessions. The goal: integrate new tools and approaches to improve productivity and reduce the heavy processes that lead to stagnation.

  • Unlimited number of accounts on the platform
  • Scalable pool of startups recruited from our network

Step 3Launch

Connect the best projects from your hackathons with the resources to become real ventures. We help support their growth, invest in the most promising ones, and help you build your own startup ecosystem.

Corporate Entrepreneurship

We have a network of disruptive startups ready to collaborate with big companies. Test their services, choose wisely, and develop your own startup ecosystem.

By sponsoring one of our themed innovation startup programs, you get exclusive access and the opportunity to work with market disruptors and startups. These business experiments can run online or on-site, in one of our incubators or your own offices. Test, learn, analyze, and iterate, and bring corporate innovation to your company.

  • Definition of a pool of end users for the experiments
  • Management of the entire experimental process
  • User experience analysis and collection of feedback
  • Complete report and dedicated project manager

3 Ways We Drive Radical Innovation

Change the Company Mindset

Corporate innovation programs fail when they stay isolated in an “innovation lab.” BeMyApp designs programs that get your existing teams, not just a dedicated innovation unit, thinking and building like a startup, so the mindset shift outlasts the program itself.

Launch Innovations Faster

Traditional product cycles can take years to validate an idea. A structured hackathon-to-incubation pipeline compresses that into months, giving you a working prototype and real user feedback before you commit a full roadmap to it.

Partner With Startups

Beyond internal programs, BeMyApp helps you build an ecosystem of external startups and entrepreneurs you can partner with, invest in, or acquire, extending your innovation pipeline beyond what your internal teams can produce alone.

Innovation Programs That Actually Shipped Something

Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente wanted to train their employees in Voice Technology and explore innovation use cases for its internal processes.

BeMyApp's Execution Strategy:

  • A 2-day Code-a-thon with KP internal teams where participants got trained on Amazon Alexa and build skills relevant for internal needs. Amazon was the tech partner for the event.
  • BeMyApp created Alexa Masterclass videos to train KP employees prior to the event on how to build voice skills.
  • BeMyApp also recruited Alexa experts (SME) for the hackathon to support the participants onsite.

Ecolab

MuleSoft provided API solutions and onsite technical mentorship to Ecolab employees, who learned of the benefits implementing APIs can have for their business processes.

BeMyApp’s Execution Strategy:

  • BeMyApp organized a 2-day internal hackathon in St. Paul, Minnesota for internal stakeholders of the IT and Digital Transformation teams.
  • Objectives of the hackathon were to prioritize which APIs Ecolab should develop, design the architecture and create a mockup of these APIs, and assess the feasibility and associated costs for their APIs.
  • The goal for Ecolab was to identify internal champions to carry these projects forward.

NBCU

NBCU’s Media Labs and Telemundo teams wished to improve viewer engagement using emerging technologies, while generating awareness within the local tech community around Telemundo’s company culture and new Miami headquarters.

BeMyApp’s Execution Strategy:

  • A 24-hour hackathon held in Miami gathering multiple profiles to develop PoCs to improve viewer engagement.
  • Multiple business partners (Telemundo, Golfnow) and tech partners (Google Cloud, Amazon Alexa, Unity, etc.) were involved to provide participants with hardware, software and data.
  • The hackathon was structured around distinct challenges aiming to boost business partners’ viewer engagement.

Innovation in Action: The yuuvis Hackathon

Client case study

Building Cloud Information-Management Solutions in Austin

At the yuuvis hackathon in Austin, developers used the yuuvis cloud API to build new information-management solutions. Watch how the program turned a technology platform into a hands-on innovation challenge.

The People Behind BeMyApp

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Frequently Asked Questions About Corporate Innovation

A corporate innovation agency designs and runs the programs, including training, hackathons, incubators, and accelerators, that help large companies build new products, skills, and internal startups faster than their normal processes allow.

Digital transformation is the broader shift to modern technology and processes, while corporate innovation (or corporate entrepreneurship) is the specific practice of running startup-style programs, like hackathons, incubators, and accelerators, inside a large company to produce new products or business models.

A hackathon is usually the “prototype” phase. After training teams on the startup mindset, the hackathon produces working prototypes, and then the strongest ones move into incubation and, eventually, a pilot or spin-off.

Yes, BeMyApp has run corporate innovation programs for banks, insurers, and other regulated enterprises, including AXA, UBS, and even the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, adapting the format to compliance and risk requirements specific to each industry.

Programs vary by scope, but the typical arc, from training, a hackathon or incubator, to a launch/acceleration phase, runs over several months. Innovation does not happen in a single event.

Yes, through online accelerators and corporate entrepreneurship support, BeMyApp helps the most promising internal or partner projects grow, and can support investment and go-to-market for the strongest ones.

Ready to Build Your Corporate Innovation Program?

There are many ways to transform a company. Tell us which building blocks matter to you, and our experts will design the program that fits.

Design Your Innovation Program

1/ Choose the Building Blocks You Are Interested In

Step 1
Learn
Workshops
Webinars
Coding Challenges
Virtual currency
Step 2
Prototype
Hackathons
In-house Incubators
Outsourced development
Reverse mentoring platform
Step 3
Launch
Online accelerators
Experimentations
Hacker Unit network

2/ Let our experts call you back

See how we run hackathons →View our developer relations services →