"Nearly a fifth of M&A exits by corporate venturing units to parent companies."

t first glance little seems to connect General Electric’s purchases of Bit Stew and ServiceMax, Monsanto’s Climate Corporation subsidiary’s acquisition of VitalFields, Intel buying Voke and Dr Pepper snapping up Bai Brands. Apart from the fact that they are all deals struck in the past month, they range in size up to $1.7bn, cover a range of geographies from Estonia to the US and sectors from agriculture to soft drinks to data analytics to virtual reality.

Dig a little closer,…