Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Awards 2016

These inaugural awards celebrate the innovation successes of the established corporations and their innovators in 2015. The awards complement the Global Corporate Venturing Awards held at the London Symposium each year, which look at corporations’ new venture deals, exits, launches and leaders.

Best corporate innovation award

This award recognises the innovations and launches in 2015 by a company primarily from their internal resources.

Alibaba’s Smile to Pay, which allows users to make a purchase from their mobile phone, then require them to snap a selfie to authenticate the purchase using Alibaba’s facial recognition technology.

Alphabet’s Google Cardboard and Jump for virtual reality ecosystem development.

Baidu’s AutoBrain to control a modified BMW 3 series autonomous car.

BP Castrol’s Nexcel, clean-and-quick engine oil change unit, first used in partnership with Aston Martin. 

Citi’s Digital Evolution to personalise private label credit card marketing.

Diageo’s Johnnie Walker smart bottle that uses thin, electronic sensors which can tell if the bottle has been opened or not and where it is in the supply chain and so change information when scanned by a smartphone. 

GE’s Evidation Health startup, incubated in partnership with US university Stanford Medicine’s Health Care academic health system to try to clinically prove a health technology product is helpful for patients.

IBM’s Watson Health and the Watson Health Cloud platform using machine learning. 

Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Healthcare Innovation division’s integrated care delivery service.

Merck’s roll-up creation of a newco out of a majority acquisition of Preventice, combined with Merck’s current assets such as Physicians Interactive / Univadis / Medhelp. 

Rigby & Peller’s smart mirror, Catherine, to scan bodies to select clothing.

Xiaomi’s ecommerce and physical stores as part of its new business model approach to selling smartphones. 

Best Innovation Developed in Partnership With a Portfolio Company 

Corporate venturing units’ portfolio companies are important partners for new products and business models. This award celebrates the collaborations that come with minority equity investments.

Baidu with Uber. With core disruption in the shift of search from desktop to mobile, Baidu has invested in a range of real-world companies, in particular driving through an investment in and partnership with taxiapp Uber.

HP with Adallom. Hewlett Packard Ventures took a stake in Adallom and the parent partnered with the portfolio company to deliver cloud security services to customers migrating to and using cloud applications. The relationship was so successful, Microsoft acquired Adallom in September.

Visa, Nasdaq, Citi Ventures, Capital One, Fiserv and Orange and Chain. Chain, a US-based provider of blockchain technology to financial institutions, raised $30m from a host of corporations and they joined  a Blockchain Working Group to explore the application of the technology in various markets and take a collaborative approach to interoperability.

Alibaba and Alphabet with Jet. Jet.com reached unicorn status after raising $350m from investors including e-commerce group Alibaba and Alphabet, which acts as Google’s holding company, at a $1bn pre-money valuation. Jet competes with Amazon in offering an e-commerce model that prioritises transparency and customer empowerment for buying in bulk or near existing warehouses. 

Best Innovation Developed in Partnership With University-based Research

Eli Lilly and Oxford University spin out Immunocore. The university retains a stake in Immunocore through Oxford Spin-Out Equity Management and, in June 2015, US drugs company Eli Lilly started a clinical trial collaboration to fight melanomas. A month later, Eli Lilly was part of Immunocore’s $320m round.

 Heliatek, a spin-off from Technical University of Dresden and the University of Ulm, completing pilot installations in Japan, Germany, Italy, China, the US and Singapore after support from corporate investors, including Innogy, Robert Bosch and BASF.

DNANexus, a spin-off from Stanford University and backed by search engine provider Google, acting as a platform for the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project (Encode).

Kensho, a Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology startup focused on analyzing how events affect financial markets.

Best Innovation Developed Out of a Corporate-Backed Accelerator or Incubator

Appsflyer, a mobile marketing analytics and attribution platform incubated at Microsoft Ventures Accelerator Tel Aviv

Orbotix, which makes the Sphero robotic ball behind the BB-8 Droid from the latest Star Wars movie, was started at the Disney Accelerator powered by Techstars.

Talkdesk, which was part of Orange Fab US’s first season programme, raised $15m in its A round.

Chief Innovation Officer of the Year

Deborah Hopkins, Citi

Luke Mansfield, PepsiCo

Geoff McGrath, Mclaren Applied Technologies

Navrina Singh, Qualcomm

Best government support for corporate venturing and the wider innovation capital ecosystem

In October, Singapore’s government said it would allocate S$40m to encourage Large Local Enterprises (LLEs) firms to invest in early-stage, technology companies based in Singapore with funds awarded in January 2016

In October, Brazil’s government laid out a programme with a full suite of nine resources to support a global corporation wanting to develop and enter a new market or industry by matching partners, deals and technology through a dedicated Aftercare Services Assistance section.

Russia’s National Technology Initiative was drafted in 2015 and is expected to lay out how the 2035 roadmap for new industry creation, including with incumbent support through venturing.

Japan’s ‘Third Arrow’ to help Japan’s economy has been around supporting entrepreneurialism through such areas as deregulation, government procurement, using quasi-public institutions and encouraging corporations to provide more venture capital. 

Corporate impact venturing award

In a pilot partnership between Asda Foundation and the Social Investment Business Foundation, the First Steps Enterprise Fund is a £300,000 pilot fund offering loan-grant packages to charities and social enterprises working in communities in England from 19 October.

Centrica’s Ignite is the UK’s first impact investment fund with a focus on energy and £10m to invest over the next 10 years.

RBC Generator Fund is a $10m pool of capital for investment in businesses that tackle social and environmental challenges, while generating a financial return.

Schneider Electric Energy Access Ventures Fund had its first closing in February and so began to invest in entrepreneurial companies bringing electricity to Sub-Saharan Africa.