GCV Emerging Leaders Awards 2021 editorial by James Mawson, editor in chief, Global Corporate Venturing
The Global Corporate Venturing Emerging Leaders Awards profiles the industry’s top 50 people who have been in the industry for broadly more than five years. The industry’s levels of professionalism and standards remain exemplary, set by those who have been fortunate to work over years in the industry.
The number one-ranked Emerging Leader, Dina Routhier, three years ago joined industrial tools maker Stanley Black & Decker’s Stanley Ventures under the legendary Larry Harper. Having previously had a degree of autonomy running design software provider Autodesk’s corporate development, acquisitions and strategic investments team, it shows Routhier’s commitment to learning and making a difference that together they worked so well in completing nearly 40 deals together.
This type of partnership shows the value of teamwork. While traditional venture and private equity investing often brings an alpha-type hierarchy between deal-doer and back office or competition among partners to invest in the best deals to personally benefit as shareholder alongside the firm, corporate venturing’s roots usually within larger companies encourages a more collaborative style – notwithstanding the competitive instincts to want to invest in the best entrepreneurs and prove their worth.
The corporate venture industry overall has invested more than $800bn since 2010, according to GCV Analytics, led by the rapid growth and sophistication of experienced, professional teams. To be effective still requires strong team building and management skills and many of the Emerging Leaders have been inspired by the qualities of their bosses, who are usually also featured in the GCV Powerlist 100 published in June at the first GCV Digital Forum.
The Emerging Leaders flourish in an environment set by these heads of units and in all sectors and regions. Where often headquartered in the US-based, others are set up in China, Korea and Europe and more emerging markets.
They are helping venture scale not just beyond Silicon Valley in California to other parts of the US, but around the world. Silicon Valley is expected to have less than a fifth of America’s deals this year, according to data provider Pitchbook’s 2021 predictions while the US itself now has less than 50% of global market share, according to the US trade body National Venture Capital Association.
While trade wars and geopolitics are increasingly headwinds to be battled, corporations are international by nature as are the entrepreneurs they back. The indomitable spirit they express is an inspiration.
congratulations to all as well as the others who often narrowly missed out.
About the Emerging Leaders selection process
The process involved researching more than 20,000 industry professionals across more than 2,000 corporate venturing units. GCV was looking for those below the top rank of the venturing hierarchy with broadly more than five years’ experience in the industry based on their deals, career development so far, being an heir apparent or being the glue in the unit.
For both sets of stars, as well as the longer list of potential candidates and nominations received and examined, the input of their managers was important as nominators and for their feedback on why they, as an Emerging Leader, are so good.
About Global Corporate Venturing
My thanks to Liwen-Edison Fu for his work on this year’s research and supplement writing, Mark Baker for production and Raksha Santilal for design and Christina Riboldi and her team at CRA for the awards ceremony, sponsored by Samsung, and to all the team at GCV for helping to make this happen.
If there is anything other help we can give through our GCV Leadership Society, our GCV Connect powered by Proseeder deals tool, our GCV Analytics platform that offers insights as a service by unlocking our proprietary data, the GCV Academy and Institute for specialist training at sites around the world and online, or our magazine and news service, let us know.
