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Corporate Venturing

Corporate venturing is a crucial element of an organization’s growth and digital transformation agendas, but just as each company’s strategy is unique, its corporate venturing approach must be as well. BCG works with companies to define and implement the right strategy and structure.

Corporate venturing plays a critical role in accelerating innovation strategy and helping an organization fulfill its growth ambitions. As industry boundaries blur and competitive clock speeds increase, companies—incumbents and newcomers alike—are both emulating and partnering with startups to turbocharge their innovation engines. For established companies, the advantages of corporate venturing include faster results, exposure to new ways of working, access to novel ideas, technologies, and business models—and enhanced competitive advantage in the next game.


Our Approach to Corporate Venturing

Corporate venturing is not one-size-fits-all. As with any powerful tool, it’s important to know how and when to use it. As part of crafting a corporate venturing strategy, BCG works closely with clients to help lay the groundwork by considering several important questions:

Questions for a Winning Corporate Venturing Strategy

Armed with the answers, it becomes possible to shape a winning strategy for corporate venturing.

We support clients across the full corporate venturing spectrum—not just defining the mandate, setting the strategy, and identifying the most attractive investment areas, but all the way through to vehicle setup and refinement, ramping up, and running operations (e.g., deal scouting and execution), and scaling activities (e.g., growth capital).

Our deep understanding of the trends driving disruption across and within industries—combined with our proven corporate venturing toolkit and knowledge base honed over hundreds of engagements, as well as our ability to tap into a unique network of startups, investors, and corporates—makes us an ideal partner to help clients define and implement a winning corporate venturing strategy.

Our Clients' Success in Corporate Venture Capital

  • Defining the mandate for corporate venturing for a global retailer as a complement to its innovation strategy and digital transformation agenda
  • Setting up a corporate venture capital unit for a global food company
  • Reviewing and refining a global retailer’s corporate venture capital and incubator strategies
  • Defining an ecosystem development strategy and resource requirements for an economic free zone
  • Designing a multi-investor venture capital fund for a client in the energy sector
  • Developing an innovation accelerator and investment platform for a global fashion player
  • Running ideation sprints and then incubating a startup for a global aerospace company

Our Partnerships and Solutions

We bring best-in-class consulting expertise to bear on every engagement and complement it with critical capabilities from BCG’s broader innovation ecosystem:

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BCG X

BCG X, BCG’s tech build and design unit, can help clients set up or strength venture-building operations, bringing together advanced tech knowledge and ambitious entrepreneurship to enable innovation at scale.

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BCG’s Center for Growth and Innovation Analytics

Our Center for Growth and Innovation Analytics can help identify the most attractive areas for innovation investment as well as promising startups with its proprietary advanced analytics tools and data sets.

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B Capital

BCG has partnered with B Capital Group to enable client investment in a diversified portfolio of innovative startups, direct investment opportunities, and startup ecosystem immersion experiences, and to offer perspectives on scaling venture capital operations.


Our Insights on Corporate Venturing

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Our Corporate Venturing Consultants

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