Paul Grayson was previously chief executive of Fate Therapeutics, managing director of venture capital firm Sanderling Ventures and founding executive chairman of Senomyx.

From 2006 to 2010, Lloyd Jones was vice-president of finance at TransMolecular having spent the previous decade as a senior director of corporate development at Genzyme.

3M New Ventures picked up the award selected by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, strategy consulting firm AT Kearney and Wirtschaftswoche magazine.

Before Inventages, D'Abbadie worked at Technikos, a UK-based medical device venture capital firm, and has joined Spark Impact.

Patel had been made managing partner of Best Buy Capital in late 2008 before becoming president of the company's Asia operations last year and has joined venture capital firm VantagePoint Capital Partners.

Mukohira was previously vice-president of MP Healthcare Venture Management, which he started in 2006 as the corporate venturing group of Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma (MTP) and Mitsubishi Chemical.

The two companies reached an agreement before Yahoo's analyst meeting last Wednesday, one of the sources told Reuters.

Decelle was previously chief executive of Lumenz, a US-based light-emitting diode technology company, and three earlier start-ups in the photonics industry: NoblePeak Vision, Apogee Photonics and ASIP.

In this double interview, Gaule's Question Time looks at two aspects of innovation and corporate venturing at Anglo-Dutch-listed consumer goods company Unilever.

US-based bank Citigroup has hired Trip Wolfe (pictured) to lead its venture capital coverage for North America.