Corporate venturing

Most companies wake up to the necessity of creating new business through corporate venturing. On the same hand many companies struggle how to create new business areas next to or even outside their current business scope. When should a company decide to explore corporate venturing? Should a company spend money on this and if yes: how much money, or better, how little?

In this book the intriguing process of corporate venturing is described in terms of family relations. In corporate venturing setting-up new businesses always takes place within or in close cooperation with a large corporate organization. So we are talking about babies and children that need to be conceived, born and raised in the precarious environment of large (mother) companies. Some of these children will be part of the corporate family, other children will grow-up outside and have only a financial and/or business relationship with the corporates. Some will leave the family (spin-outs) and others will be adopted (acquisitions). What is the wisest thing to do, knowing that large companies generally have the least problems with the conception and the early stages of life as the baby is safe in their incubator and don't need substantial investments, in contrast with raising teenagers involving huge problems and challenges to overcome?

Fred van Ommen en Corina Kuiper are both fascinated by the field of corporate venturing. They wrote this book for the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Corporate Venturing Network Netherlands (CVNN). By sharing the experiences of professionals in the field of corporate venturing, they hope they will inspire the creation of new family members in corporate organizations.

'Instructieve bijdrage aan het debat' - Frits van Hout, CMO ASML
'Great book on corporate venturing and its inextricable connection with corporate innovation (oid)' - Henry Chesbrough, Faculty Director Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
'Verplichte kost voor iedereen die in de weer is met corporate venturing' - Rob van Leen, Chief Innovation Officer DSM