Seven ‘corporate venturing’ strategies to foster innovation (and create an environment for long-term growth)

Seven “Corporate Venturing” Strategies to Foster Innovation tackles the question: What should companies do to accelerate innovation and remain relevant? Or, stated differently: What should companies do to avoid being disrupted by more agile and innovative startups? One answer is corporate venturing.

Corporate venturing is often understood as a corporation making an investment in external startups either directly (off the balance sheet through a corporate venturing unit) or indirectly (through a venture capital fund) for strategic and/or financial gain.

This kind of definition is limited, at least as a description of current “best practice” in corporate venturing. Based on the findings of an empirical review of the world’s most innovative companies’ venturing practices, we identified various other corporate venturing strategies that have been adopted. These strategies transform firms/corporations into open and inclusive “ecosystems” built, in part, around new forms of relationship with entrepreneurs, founders and startups. By “organizing-for-innovation” in this way, large firms give themselves the best opportunity of remaining relevant over the long-term and offer startups the best opportunity of successfully scaling.