Of the Fortune 500, 32 companies are headquartered in Illinois. Many of them have opened pipelines to startups — seeking partnerships before being disrupted by them.
That's not to say big companies can't create on their own — many do, said Mohanbir Sawhney, McCormick Tribune Foundation Clinical Professor of Technology at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
Image: Workers finish putting a Motorola sign where the Santa Fe sign once stood atop the building at 224 S. Michigan Ave. in Chicago on July 3, 2012 for the incoming new tenant Motorola Solutions, Inc. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
