When you are the big, do you help the small?

It intrigues me the relationship between small and large business, between start-up and established businesses.

I found myself asking about the motivation for assistance from big to small companies. Is it simply about acquisition?  Removing the competition or embedding new features where you find gaps. Or indeed, should one be more concerned about giving others a hand? I was thinking about this more than just in terms of profit. For me this reaches its answer in the ability to innovate.

For the greater technical good, we need larger companies to share so that others can benefit from there generational learning's.  Large companies can afford to invest in R&D and never implement it. At  the same time smaller companies have the business urgency and agility to try new things.

Embracing  a growth mindset, how do you fail at something and share it so others can learn? It makes entire sense for a larger company to invest in small firms so that they can spread your risk and reap future returns. On such evidence of the latter is featured here:  How BMW, Audi, GM and the rest of big auto are betting on startups.

But maybe it should at early stages be something that is done with no immediate return. One such local example I heard was within Microsoft System Integrators. Each helping each other. For example Readify helping Kloud find their feet in the early days. Is it a good thing that they were later acquired by Telstra? Only time will tell!