Corporate Venturing

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.

BCG’s Corporate Venturing Consulting Services

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:

• What role should corporate venturing play in realizing the overall growth ambition?
• How to determine the mandate for corporate venturing within the innovation and digital transformation agenda, and define a corporate venturing strategy?
• Which corporate venturing vehicles (incubators, accelerators, innovation labs, digital labs, and corporate venture capital units) to select?
• How to determine and allocate the necessary capital across innovation vehicles to bring the strategy to life?
• How best to orchestrate the efforts and roles of different innovation vehicles—with one another and with the research and development and M&A activities of the sponsoring corporation?
• How to define the strategy and objectives—for example, accessing new technologies or insulating noncore moves from the core—for each corporate venturing vehicle?
• How to set up and run a vehicle (to create deal flow and identify first potential targets)?
• How to scale—and/or integrate—corporate venturing activities to create real impact?

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 (such as deal scouting and execution), and scaling activities (like expanding 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.