Overview

Joel Whitaker of the Corporate Strategy Board, a best practices research group said, "In our latest survey of large corporations, we found that fully half have created venturing units, up from roughly one-third in 2000. Companies in a range of industries have determined that their innovation strategy is bolstered by establishing support structures and governance systems that are distinct from the core business."

Quarterly corporate venture-capital investments in start-ups rose to nearly $6 billion at the beginning of 2000. Scarcely a year later, with the economic downturn in full force, that number fell by 81%. Many heralded it as the end of corporate venture capital. But a look at the chart, "The Venture Capital Explosion," tells a different story. Even eliminating the extraordinary (and unsustainable) growth years of 1999 and 2000, we see corporate venture capital sustain a steady, upward growth curve from 1994 to the present and maintain a constant percentage of the total venture capital invested.

copyright sign 2002, Alan Meyer, Lundquist Professor of Entrepreneurial Management, University of Oregon

As Henry Chesbrough points out in his March '02 article in the Harvard Business Review, in 2002, more than 200 major corporations are still actively investing in start-ups. And while still feared by some as risky and irrelevant, corporate ventures may well become the new poster child of corporate growth and profitability. Its potential is beginning to be recognized by many companies that formerly engaged only in R&D, corporate development, or business development. Fueled in large part by technology, corporate management understanding, and entrepreneurism, corporate venturing is taking on the aura of the 1960s-70s quality movement for companies, which ushered in a whole new era of corporate growth.

For those who want to know more about corporate venturing and corporate venture programs, we have collected the various kinds of information we find useful in our own work and assembled it in this section of the website. We have included, for example, key articles and books, descriptions and hot links to research, organizations who cover topics relevant to corporate venturing, news highlights and upcoming events, and access to additional services for developing effective corporate venturing programs.