Driving factors for symbiotic collaborations between startups and large firms in open innovation ecosystems.

Summary Collaboration between startups and large companies is becoming increasingly necessary in the current context of open innovation, accelerating market demand and therefore the ever faster race to innovate. However, these asymmetrical partners have significant differences that can generate a distance between them, which can jeopardize the collaboration project. Beyond the dyad, other actors in the ecosystem, in particular innovation intermediaries, are also involved in the collaboration project. The objective of this thesis is to highlight the factors favoring symbiotic collaboration between startups and large companies, based on the organizational and financial independence of the actors. This thesis also aims to show the interest of using the analogy with biological symbiosis between symbionts interacting in a given ecosystem. The aim is to highlight the factors of balance in the relationship, from a win-win perspective. Starting from the differences highlighted through the cognitive distance, this research proposes to study the phenomenon of collaboration between start-ups and large companies according to an exploratory approach and a mixed method, qualitative and quantitative, based on the case study method. The study of 38 cases (which led to the collection of data from 53 respondents in the form of interviews and questionnaires) proposes a temporal, multi-perspective and holistic approach, mobilizing the theoretical framework of proximity (geographical, cognitive, social, organizational) and that of dynamic capabilities. This research resulted in four articles leading to several theoretical and managerial contributions. First, the study from the perspective of startups identified the factors that promote proximity and collaboration between startups and large companies on four levels: intra-organizational of the large company, intra-organizational of the startup, inter-organizational and ecosystemic. Further exploration highlighted the complementary skills of startup founding teams, compared to solo startupers, and which is a source of proximity with large companies. The next part of the study, from the perspective of large companies, highlighted the importance of management based on collective intelligence as well as the changing role of middle managers in large companies in the implementation of an open innovation strategy integrating a variety of actors, such as startups. Finally, the study of the perspective of innovation intermediaries regarding their roles in the development of the startup-large company collaboration has made it possible to bring out these different roles according to three phases of the construction of the collaboration, including that of constituting an external resource for the large company for the regeneration of its dynamic capacities. A transversal contribution is also the identification and operationalization of the 2+1 phases of the collaboration following a chronological axis: the Upstream, Design and Process phases of the collaboration.