Open Innovation is entering a new phase of maturity. Once a marginal function focused on experimentation and external collaboration, today’s innovation leadership is increasingly accountable for strategy execution and financial performance.

This is one of the key findings of Mind the Bridge’s latest report, “Open Innovation Outlook 2026 – Insights and Future Perspectives from Corporate Startup Stars”, based on data collected in December 2025 during the closed-door session of the 10th Corporate Startup Stars Awards in Paris, organized in partnership with the International Chamber of Commerce. 

Heads of Innovation from many of the world’s Top 100 most innovative companies were asked a simple but revealing question: how are you measured? The answer signals a structural shift.

Only 56% of innovation leaders’ KPIs now relate strictly to Innovation activities. The remaining 44% are tied directly to Strategy and Profit & Loss impact, a clear indication that the role has expanded well beyond experimentation.

  • Bottom-line impact already accounts for 19% of KPIs, with cost savings representing 44% of these metrics and operational efficiency gains and margin improvement making up the remaining 56%. 
  • Another 12% of respondents carry explicit Top-line responsibilities, primarily focused on revenue generation, sales and customer acquisition (69%), while fewer organizations track the creation of entirely new products or businesses (31%), suggesting a preference for nearer-term monetization over longer-horizon growth bets.
  • Strategy-related KPIs represent 13% of the total, split almost evenly between strategic alignment and prioritization (46%) and sustainability or impact objectives (54), underscoring the growing expectation that innovation leaders help shape future corporate direction, not just deliver projects.

“The data confirms what we are increasingly seeing on the ground,” said Alberto Onetti, Chairman of Mind the Bridge. “Innovation executives are no longer hired to create ‘enabling conditions.’ They are expected to shape strategy, deliver measurable financial outcomes, and help future-proof the organization. Open innovation is moving away from exploration for its own sake toward execution, impact, and accountability. In short: innovation was the job. Now it’s strategy, growth, and P&L.”

From experimentation to execution

Looking specifically at the Innovation domain, the analysis of the KPIs in use offers a few interesting insights (in addition to confirming some well-known trends).

  • There is (finally) a stronger emphasis on outcomes. This is particularly evident in the case of Venture Client, where KPIs related to adoption now outweigh those focused on POCs. A similar shift — albeit with greater difficulty — can also be observed in Intrapreneurship.
    In the case of CVC, the measurement of returns is constrained by the medium- to long-term time horizon of the instrument. This explains the need to complement financial metrics with process-related KPIs.
  • More recently emerged areas (Venture Building in particular, and Open R&D) still lack codified and standardized measurement frameworks. This is to be expected.
  • Paradoxically, the management of innovation ecosystems — which is the most widely adopted innovation activity across corporates — still suffers from the absence of structured measurement criteria. At present, KPIs tend to focus either on community-building/networking activities or on deal-flow enablement, but only in a limited number of cases are they truly effective in capturing the value created.

What keeps innovation leaders awake at night

To complement KPI data, Mind the Bridge asked executives to identify their top priorities for the year ahead. When clustered, responses converge around a pragmatic agenda:

  • Securing stronger strategic alignment and clearer mandates for innovation
  • Delivering tangible, measurable financial impact
  • Turning Venture Clienting into scalable industrial deployment
  • Expanding CVC beyond core business to enable Horizon 3 and future growth
  • Embedding AI across the organization while laying foundations for longer-term bets such as quantum computing
  • Continuing cultural transformation to prepare organizations for the future economy

“Together, these priorities paint a picture of innovation leaders operating at the intersection of technology, strategy, and finance, increasingly expected to act as integrators of change rather than stewards of isolated innovation programs” – concluded Alberto Onetti.

A market moving out of turbulence, selectively

This evolution comes against a backdrop of cautiously improving market conditions for corporate innovation.

After several years of turbulence, 2026 opens under a cautiously brighter sky, with open innovation budgets stabilizing and beginning to rise again: as anticipated in late 2025, 32% of corporates expect to increase innovation budgets by 10–20% this year, while 9% anticipate larger increases of up to 50%. Nearly half expect spending to remain stable, and only a minority foresee cuts.
Venture Client models and Corporate Venture Capital continue to benefit from clearer links to business impact, while startup ecosystem engagement remains resilient. By contrast, intrapreneurship programs show signs of fatigue, and Venture Builders face selective consolidation rather than broad expansion. Overall, Open Innovation is entering a phase of greater discipline and realism: tools delivering measurable results are gaining altitude, while weaker or poorly integrated approaches face cloudier skies.

As corporates move away from storm conditions toward more selective growth, the message from the Open Innovation Outlook 2026 is clear: innovation remains a strategic priority, but only where it is grounded in results.