Balancing strategic and financial value [has been] a long-standing tension in the corporate venture capital (CVC) industry. Industry practitioners adopted various models over time, but academic researchers lent their insights to the debate as well.
In Harvard Business Review (March 2002), innovation theorist Henry Chesbrough argued that a CVC investment could be conceptualised along two dimensions: “its objective and the degree to which the operations of the investing company and the startup are linked.”
The framework Chesbrough advanced contemplated two possible objectives that motivated a large corporation’s investment in a startup. On the one hand, such an investment was strategic if the large corporation viewed the startup as a means “to increase the sales and…
