In an increasingly global venture capital landscape, corporate venturing has a
unique part to play in turning the great potential offered by these transformations
into value for their corporate parents, write Boris Battistini, research associate, ETH Zurich, and Martin Haemmig, adjunct professor CeTIM at UniBW Munich and Leiden University.

Over the past few years, analysts and commentators have described the new wave of corporate venturing (CV) activities sweeping across industrial sectors. Despite adverse macroeconomic conditions and highly volatile capital markets, the total number of CV programmes has grown dramatically from 694 in January 2010 to 865 in December last year.

Perhaps most importantly, today’s corporate venturing landscape is the first truly global one. It is a landscape characterised by the acceleration of the geographic shift of venture investment patterns…