Corporate Venturing and Innovation: Driving Growth and New Business Development

This background note introduces the topic of corporate venturing activities (CVA) and describes the four most common types (Corporate Venture Capital Unit, Corporate Venture Builder, Venture Client Model and Corporate Incubator/ Accelerator). Firms engage in CVA as a means to drive innovation and new business development by participating in entrepreneurial ecosystems, forming relationships with start-ups, and gaining insights into emerging technological innovations. Such activities include sourcing suitable start-ups, investing in early-stage companies, and nurturing and scaling business ideas. The corporate’s goal is to capture value by leveraging innovative solutions for the core business, acquiring the new company, or selling its equity stake.

This background note provides students with an overview of corporate venturing. From the parent company’s point of view, all corporate venturing activities (CVA) are undertaken to augment in-house R&D, expand the parent company’s awareness of innovations and industry trends, gain insights that reduce potential threats to its core business, and build new businesses. This note explains the four most common CVA types in detail.