Harmonizing corporate venturing modes: an integrative review and research agenda

Abstract

The modern landscape of corporate venturing (CV) is emerging and has undergone increasingly rapid evolutions over the past two decades. A growing heterogeneity of CV modes can be observed such as corporate accelerators, corporate incubators, corporate venture capital, and strategic partnerships with startups. Selecting the appropriate mode is critical given that most corporations struggle to find the proverbial needle in the haystack. Furthermore, scholars' examination of CV is fragmented and involves competing frameworks and typologies, which fails to provide practitioners with a better understanding of how to effectively choose between distinct CV activities. Building upon a systematic review of the literature, the research question addressed in this paper is: Which CV modes and dimensions can be identified in the literature and how can they be categorized comprehensively? To address this, I propose a reconciliation of various CV dimensions by constructing a framework enhanced with practical examples derived from expert interviews. Going beyond the highly dispersed work on CV I strive to (1) identify, organize, and integrate the relevant literature on corporate venturing activities; (2) analyze the dimensions that have been proposed by scholars to categorize and characterize distinct CV activities; and (3) harmonize competing approaches and introduce a coherent and reconciled framework that organizes CV modes along 'inside-in', 'inside-out', and 'outside-in' innovation flows, thus helping practitioners and scholars alike better understand and choose more appropriately between discrete CV modes in relation to specific objectives.

Toward an integrated framework of corporate venturing for organizational ambidexterity as a dynamic capability

“…Hill and Birkinshaw 2014 ), a shared understanding and an overview of the possible roles for CV in regard to OA are still missing (Hill and Birkinshaw 2006 ; Narayanan et al 2009 ; Rossi et al 2019a ). Scholars often argue that CV and other business functions mostly perform either a solely explorative or solely exploitative task (Gutmann 2019 ). However, recent research suggests a directly ambidextrous role for CV, which potentially would lead to strategic corporate venturing as a dynamic capability in the continuous renewal of the firm (Blindenbach-Driessen and Ende 2014 ; Hill and Birkinshaw 2014 ; Holotiuk and Beimborn 2019 ).…”

“…In contrast to previous waves of corporate venturing that usually ended in cycles of recession, this golden age already has persisted for a comparably long time and, thus, shows some signs of maturity (Birkinshaw et al 2002 ; Birkinshaw and Hill 2005 , Burgelman and Välikangas 2005 ; Weiblen and Chesbrough 2015 ). Here, established CV modes, such as corporate venture capital or internal new venture development, are now complemented by newer approaches, such as (digital) innovation labs, corporate accelerators or corporate incubators (Gutmann 2019 ; Kanbach and Stubner 2016 ; Shankar and Shepherd 2019 ). Often being part of the overall trend towards more ‘open innovation’, some of these modes seem to better bridge the gap between the start-up and the corporate world and may, therefore, potentially enable simultaneous exploration and exploitation (Hill and Georgoulas 2016 ; Schroll and Mild 2012 ; Weiblen and Chesbrough 2015 ).…”

Why do startups pursue initial coin offerings (ICOs)? The role of economic drivers and social identity on funding choice

“…Particularly interesting is the value-added aspect in this context. As VCs add value to their portfolio companies by providing smart capital and thus nonfinancial benefits to help their portfolio companies create and capture value (Sørensen 2007;Croce et al 2013;Gutmann 2019), future research could investigate whether value-added services are truly provided by the ICO community. Future longitudinal studies could explore the long-term success of ICO-funded companies compared to VC-funded startups and investigate at which stage of the startup are ICOs best employed.…”

Open Innovation’s “Multiunit Back-End Problem”: How Corporations Can Overcome Business Unit Rivalry

“…23 It requires corporate accelerators to customize how they engage with startups based on their strategic or financial intention (e.g., corporate venture capital, corporate incubators, corporate accelerator programs, hackathons, platform programs, co-working spaces, co-development agreement, and acquisition) and, more importantly, to establish strong engagement between the corporation's internal business units and the promising startups identified. 24 Previous literature, however, often overlooks the business units' role. Business units do not automatically engage in an open innovation initiative for several reasons.…”