Editorial: The corporate venturing ecosystem is forming

Over the past few years a corporate venturing ecosystem has been growing, and for this reason how corporates partner with one another and the wider venture capital community is a key topic at our Fourth Global Corporate Venturing Symposium in London this month.

In this month’s issue we publish an article by US-based healthcare company Merck’s Global Health Innovation Fund’s Bill Taranto, who will be speaking at the symposium, which makes the case for how corporate venture firms are here to stay.

In his article – well read on our website and in Thomson Reuters’ PEHub, where it first appeared – Taranto says: “There is an increasing popularity of syndicates with more than one strategic. As entrepreneurs consider which groups can create the most value for the company, many of them are recognising that corporate venturers often make a better syndicate. We are even seeing deals in which competitive strategic groups are syndicating.”

This trend is highly interesting in that groups that fight each other tooth and nail at the mergers and acquisitions table, and in the hunt for sales, are at the same time back-slapping together in the entrepreneurial world. As one executive attending a corporate venturing network event quipped: “If those in the mother ship understood how well we all get on, questions would be raised.”

Interest in how to make these partnerships fertile for start ups is strong. Issam Dairanieh, of BP Ventures, the UK oil major’s corporate venturing unit, will also be using our symposium to talk about a significant partnership project he has conceived for the corporate ecosystem investing in venture. 

These efforts to partner more effectively are to be welcomed, as corporations are tackling similar issues in innovation, and attempts to converge on technologies that can add value to many parties are welcome. All this is fuelling a move towards cross-sector interaction and convergence, in which companies operating in sectors as wide apart as IT and natural resources increasingly talk with each other.

At the same time inquiries are rising from venture capital firms curious about how they should interact with corporates in the venturing arena.

For this reason, venture firm Andreessen Horowitz’s Jamie McGurk is attending our symposium to discuss, in a fireside chat with GE Ventures’ Sue Siegel, ways the venture industry and corporations can partner effectively.

And there has been a rising trend for executives to leave corporations to start their own venture firms aimed at serving the specific investment needs of individual corporates. It will be interesting to see whether this trend leads to greater satisfaction among corporates entering the venture world. 

In this issue of Global Corporate Venturing, consultancy firm Boston Consulting Group sets out its perspective on effective early-stage investment, SetSquared’s Simon Bond, in an article commissioned for our sister title Global University Venturing, talks about the positive interaction of corporates, universities and open innovation, Quentin Carruthers, the editor of our new title Global Government Venturing, considers innovation in Canada, and Silicon Valley Bank’s Claire Lee tackles the subject of the quantified self. And there is much more. 

Thanks must go to these and all other contributors to this magazine, which will also be distributed in a hard copy form at our symposium on May 20 and 21.

Let us know your thoughts on how corporates can partner effectively in the start up world. And join the discussion at our symposium – http://gcvsymposium.com