Endava’s Dava.Rise wants to fix the most challenging part of open innovation: production

18 Dec

Endava has launched Dava.Rise to help big companies adopt startup and scaleup tech faster. The idea is simple: enterprises often want innovation quickly, but many startup or scale-up products are only “demo-ready” and still need work to meet enterprise requirements. Dava.Rise, Endava has launched Dava.Rise to help big companies adopt scale-up tech faster.

Launched in November this year, Endava describes the programme as a way to connect high-potential scale-ups with global enterprises seeking to accelerate innovation.

The headline claim is simple: Dava.Rise “bridges the gap between enterprise demand for rapid innovation and the solutions emerging from today’s scale-up ecosystem,” using Endava’s international network to identify enterprise challenges and match them with “pioneering scale-ups.”

The more interesting claim is implicit: the scarce resource in enterprise innovation is no longer ideas. It’s deployment, the unglamorous work that clears security review, compliance, integration, procurement, and internal ownership politics.

A bridge built from the enterprise side

Lorenzo Magni, Global Head of Dava.Rise at Endava frames the programme as enterprise-led from the start, and he’s careful about incentives. “We aren't here taking stakes in the business, and I think when we discuss venture firms later on in the role they play with us, I think it's important that I clarify that,” Magni said. “But really, what we're trying to do is we started the Enterprise side of the equation where we've got fabulous clients across the globe in several different industries.”

That distinction matters because it shifts what gets optimised. Many accelerators are built around founder education, fundraising readiness, or platform adoption. Dava.Rise argues that enterprises need a repeatable way to turn venture innovation into sustainable production.

Why is this moment fertile?

The market is pushing in Endava’s direction. Gartner forecasts that worldwide AI spending will total nearly $1.5 trillion in 2025 and exceed $2 trillion in 2026, driven primarily by AI's integration into products and infrastructure. Budgets are rising, but scaled rollouts remain uneven - especially where regulation, data-sharing constraints, and security requirements bite.

Open innovation is also mainstream, but messy. Sopra Steria’s Open Innovation Report 2025 highlights how collaboration between corporates and startups is now normalised: 72% of surveyed large organisations have collaborated with startups, and 57% have run AI-focused open innovation projects (with 6 in 10 of those within generative AI). And yet, the report offers a stark reality check: only 22% of large companies have deployed generative AI at scale, and only 47% of startups believe corporates genuinely value their contributions.

The survey behind the report covered 1,021 public- and private-sector organisations and 622 startups across 12 European countries, making it difficult to dismiss as a niche view. If you want one sentence that captures the market: collaboration is easy; conversion to production is rare.

“Market product fit,” not product–market fit

Magni’s language for the mechanism flips the classic startup mantra. “You use the terminology product market fit (PMF). We think about this the other way. We think what we do is market product fit. As for what we have, we start on the client side, where we understand what they're trying to solve. And then we go into the venture space and find the right innovation that solves for it.”

That inversion is doing real work. It’s Endava way of saying that “open innovation” often fails because it’s too open: vague problem statements, too many stakeholders, and too little accountability for getting from pilot to production. Dava.Rise is meant to narrow the funnel to buyer-backed problems and then use Endava’s delivery machinery to remove the adoption friction.

Endava’s CEO, John Cotterell, sells the same pairing from the enterprise side: “Enterprises want to innovate at speed, while scale-ups seek the guidance and infrastructure to succeed,” he said in the press release. “We bring the best of both these worlds together, pairing inventiveness and entrepreneurial creativity with enterprise-grade delivery and execution. We believe Dava.Rise will help to turn transformative ideas into scalable reality.”

The stage choice: why Series A/B is a feature

Dava.Rise is not trying to be a pre-seed nursery, or look at startups in their early stages.

“The first cohorts and ventures we've identified are around this series A and series B. There is sufficient market traction to support the next wave. When you go earlier than that, I think the bridge we need to build becomes a little bit bigger. What we've tried to do is make sure we can solve very quickly for our clients,” added Magni.

That’s a pragmatic stance: by Series A/B, a company typically has proof that the product works. The remaining risk is enterprise survivability—and that’s where Endava wants to add value.

Magni explained, “Once you're engaged, you go deeper. What we're trying to understand is how that scale works, and it's a key question for us. When you have to distribute or deliver at an enterprise level in a regulated market, many compliance and security areas must be well understood. There's a volume of customers that come through. So for us, that's the key threshold.”

How this differs from other “accelerators”

Dava.Rise enters a crowded category, but most neighbouring programmes are optimised for different outcomes. Y Combinator and Techstars are archetypal accelerator models: cohort-based programmes designed to help early-stage startups build faster, raise capital, and leverage dense investor and mentor networks.

Google for Startups Accelerator offers three-month programmes with tailored technical, product and leadership support from Google experts. Meanwhile, hyperscaler programmes like AWS Activate and Microsoft for Startups use credits, tooling and ecosystem perks to reduce infrastructure friction and pull startups onto their platforms.

There are also corporate innovation platforms like Plug and Play, which explicitly frames its value as matching large corporations with startups. And there’s the “venture client” approach - exemplified by BMW Startup Garage, which calls itself BMW’s venture client unit and focuses on evaluating startups and enabling them as long-term partners.

Consultancies have their own versions too: Accenture’s Project Spotlight is an immersive engagement and investment programme aimed at filling innovation gaps for large enterprises, while Capgemini Ventures describes structured collaboration with startups to deliver value to clients.

Endava bets that it can win not by running the largest cohort or shouting the loudest, but by selling a specific value proposition: enterprise demand-led selection plus enterprise-grade delivery. Endava’s own Dava.Rise page summarises that worldview bluntly:

“Innovation alone isn’t enough – it needs scale, trust and delivery to thrive. That’s what Dava.Rise brings: a clear path from great ideas to enterprise-ready outcomes.”

Octopus Ventures and the “measurable outcomes” framing

Dava.Rise is launching with Octopus Ventures, and that partnership is doing more than adding a logo to the programme. Octopus gives Endava a faster, more reliable way to find scale-ups with real traction, because these companies have typically been pressure-tested through investment diligence, customer references, and the realities of building a repeatable business. That matters when Endava’s goal isn’t to nurture ideas, but to take working products and help them survive enterprise requirements.

And for Octopus, it’s a way to turn “promising tech” into “enterprise-backed proof” - the kind of progress that strengthens the portfolio and makes the next funding or exit conversation easier.

For founders, the value lies in the fact that this isn’t just another “intro engine.” Endava starts with real enterprise problems, and Octopus helps surface ventures that are far enough along to address that demand. It’s a pipeline plus a filter: Endava can focus on making companies enterprise-ready, and Octopus can target the programme at companies more likely to convert pilot interest into something bigger.

Octopus is also unusually clear about what “success” should look like. “Dava.Rise offers an opportunity to connect the creative imagination of founders with the distribution and scale of global organisations, unlocking value for both sides of this business equation,” said Erin Platts, CEO of Octopus Ventures & Octopus Investments. “The goal of Dava.Rise is to help innovation translate into measurable business outcomes.” That last line is the real standard. Measurable outcomes don’t mean more pilots; they mean deployments that clear security and compliance, integrate cleanly, and are used enough that enterprises renew and expand.

Sindhu Kashyap