Is CVC’s “experimentation era” ending?

For so long there has been a narrative that corporate accelerators are just another bit of innovation theatre — great for trying out lots of things at small scale but producing little of actual merit. So, it is worth pausing for a moment on a recent accelerator success story:

At the end of last month International Airlines Group (IAG) announced that one of the companies in its accelerator, an AI-powered maintenance planning startup called AISmartPlan, was signing a commercial deal with Aer Lingus, one of IAG’s airlines.  

What struck me about the story was the speed: AISmartPlan went from proof of concept to working solution to rollout with Aer Lingus in just three months. Maybe AISmartPlan was exceptional, or could it just be that IAG, having run an accelerator for a decade now, has figured out the formula for getting results?   

This same narrative of “just getting things done” was brought out in our interview with TechNexus, which is using a hybrid investment and incubation model — what they call a “venture collaborative” — to improve the results of corporate-startup collaboration. The Chicago-based organisation started as a local technology trade association and community hub and then realised that there was a huge unfilled need in making corporate-startup relationships work better.  

A number of corporations were coming to TechNexus cofounders, Terry Howerton and Fred Hoch, with the same request:  

“They told us they had tried everything. They’d written venture cheques, bought small startups, sponsored incubators, but none of it had worked,” says Howerton.  

The engagements were all failing at the same point — investments were being made but no meaningful collaboration was following. Howerton and Hoch started partnering with companies to make joint investments, with the two TechNexus partners then inserting themselves into the corporations, consultant-style, to broker the business collaborations.  

These engagements resulted in boat company Brunswick buying a peer-to-peer boat rental business, and RV manufacturer Thor Industries developing a hybrid electric vehicle, among other things.  

Commercial results have become a key focus now in venturing. Corporations have become impatient with “eyes and ears” exercises and interesting experiments. Perhaps a decade ago big corporations needed to be shaken out of lethargy and shown new disruptive ideas. Now everyone has got that memo, and with AI able to generate dozens of novel business plans in seconds, ideas are a dime a dozen. It is the execution that is hard. The experimentation era is ending— this is now the results era.  

On that note, I have one quick ask this week. We’ve launched our second survey on corporate venture building. Last year’s study made a great start in tracking what corporates are doing globally, surfacing models, outcomes and pain points (you can see the full report here). But there is much more to learn and we’re hoping this year’s study will help us understand how programmes are evolving and what is emerging as best practice. 

If your company runs a venture building programme, I’d be really grateful if you could take a few minutes to tell us about it through this quick survey.

Many thanks — and hope to see quite a few of you at the Symposium next week.  

This editor’s note was first published in GCV’s Blueprint newsletter, which tracks corporate venture news, key deals, new funds best practice and jobs.

Want to get Blueprint directly in your inbox every Monday? Sign up for free here.