Corporate Social Venturing

This chapter has three purposes: first, to briefly outline corporate venturing as a sub-field in corporate entrepreneurship that recently has gained prominence in research on family-owned businesses (FOB); second, to highlight the missing social dimension in research on FOB that focuses on corporate venturing, conceptualize this added social dimension as corporate social venturing (CSV), and to empirically illustrate CSV with well-known Mexican FOB engaged in CSV; and third, to propose an agenda for researching CSV done by FOB.

THE IMPACT OF STRATEGY AND STRUCTURE ON THE PERFORMANCE OF CORPORATE VENTURE CAPITAL UNITS

The range of organisational designs and their interplay with the objectives of corporate venture capital (CVC) units has yet to be fully understood. Using primary qualitative data collected from 20 CVC units, the authors show that although strategy does not always consciously drive structural design, there are clear patterns of beneficial organisational structure that support achievement of particular objectives. Furthermore, the authors discuss the implications of objectives and organic, hybrid and mechanistic structures on CVC performance, contributing both to the CVC literature and the practice of corporate venturing.

Kooperationen mit Start-ups

Aufgrund vielfältiger Entwicklungen in ihrem Umfeld müssen sich etablierte Unternehmen externen Wissensquellen öffnen, um Innovationen hervorzubringen. Im Rahmen von Corporate Venturing suchen sie dazu häufig einen Zugang zu Start-ups. Während Corporate Venturing kein neues Phänomen darstellt, erlebt es in den letzten Jahren einen Aufschwung. Dies zeigt sich etwa daran, dass viele DAX30-Unternehmen über Venture-Einheiten verfügen, um Kooperationen mit Startups zu betreiben. Anhand der Ergebnisse einer Unternehmensbefragung mit mehr als 400 Teilnehmern aus verschiedenen Branchen werden in diesem Beitrag die Motivation der Kooperationspartner und Technologieschwerpunkte von etablierten Unternehmen thematisiert.

Exploring the Practice of Evaluation in Corporate Venturing

Venturing activities have become a cornerstone of corporates’ innovation strategies but remain subject to high failure rates. Failure reasons comprise especially poor evaluation qualities, resulting in suboptimal resource allocations. In this study, we investigate the practice of evaluation in corporate venturing by analyzing primary data from 21 in-depth interviews with managers of internal corporate venturing (ICV) programs. We find that the evaluation elements (1) evaluation dates, (2) evaluation methodologies, and (3) evaluation bodies are not isolated — as often suggested by prior research — but interdependent by determining each other. By developing a better understanding of the specific relationships among the main evaluation elements in ICV programs, we contribute to the corporate venturing literature and provide guidance for practitioners.

Assessing the impact of corporate entrepreneurship in the financial performance of subsidiaries of Colombian business groups: under environmental dynamism moderation

Corporate entrepreneurship creates opportunities in employment, technological advances, value creation, and cultural transformation for entrepreneurial ecosystems, entrepreneurs, governments, economies, and society around the globe. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of corporate entrepreneurship on the financial performance of subsidiaries in Colombian business groups under the moderating effect of the environmental dynamism, because the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and financial performance in emerging economies must differ from developed economies. Using a cross-sectional structural equation modeling analysis, this study assessed the impact of entrepreneurial orientation and corporate venturing on the firm financial performance of 87 subsidiaries of Colombian business groups at different levels of environmental dynamism. This study also confirms that the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and performance is context-dependent and that entrepreneurial orientation has a strong and positive causal relationship with corporate venturing. Additionally, subsidiaries of Colombian business groups increase their financial performance when also does the entrepreneurial orientation, and decrease financial performance when so does corporate venturing. Furthermore, the results show that environmental dynamism does not have a moderating effect on the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship of subsidiaries in Colombian business groups and their performance. This paper would contribute to important areas in Latin America business, where such studies are scarce.

Toward an integrated framework of corporate venturing for organizational ambidexterity as a dynamic capability

In times of changing business environments, firms must constantly renew their competitive advantage by establishing dynamic capabilities. While often attempting to employ this in corporate venturing activities, they face the challenge of simultaneously exploring new and exploiting existing business opportunities. Examining possible approaches to mastering this feat of ‘organizational ambidexterity’ reveals an extensive but scattered picture. To better integrate this effort by assessing how corporate venturing is linked with organizational ambidexterity in the literature and identifying possible organizational setups, this systematic literature review builds on a sample of 172 studies. Based on different dimensions of dynamic capabilities, the analysis indicates that corporate venturing may take a solely explorative or an exploitative role, or balance both, to directly enable organizational ambidexterity, following a ‘trade-off’, respectively ‘paradox’, school of thought. As a result, this paper identifies four different setups of corporate venturing in an integrated framework, based on the ability and approach to enabling organizational ambidexterity. Here, the synthesis in the proposed framework of the studies examined allows differentiating between not directly ambidextrous separated or integrated corporate venturing and directly ambidextrous contextual or interlinked corporate venturing. As a novel contribution to the fields of strategic management, organizational change and corporate entrepreneurship, this integrated perspective suggests an often overlooked, potentially more strategic role for corporate venturing in the strategic renewal of a firm’s competitive advantage, thus building the basis for further empirical research on strategic corporate venturing approaches for organizational ambidexterity and their application in practice.

Corporate Entrepreneurship: A Research Perspective

The theoretical and empirical knowledge on corporate entrepreneurship (ce) has evolved in the research domain over the last 50 years, beginning very slowly and growing in importance in that time. Because of this evolution and expansion in CE research, the theoretical and empirical knowledge about CE and the entrepreneurial behavior on which it is based has progressed to a point where a greater understanding of the concept can be presented. Many of the elements essential to constructing a theoretically grounded understanding of the domains of CE have been identified. An examination of the field reveals that there are three research domains that have developed over the years: corporate venturing (either internal or external), strategic entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial orientation. In examining the evolution of CE research across five decades, the focus of CE research has varied over the years. The very early research published in the 1970s focused more on how teams could establish entrepreneurial activities inside established organizations; however, this early research was sparse because CE was not widely acknowledged nor sought in existing organizations. The 1980s saw some research into entrepreneurial behavior inside established organizations that explained how such activity could simply not exist in the structure and operations of existing corporations. Opposed to that thinking, many more researchers demonstrated that the idea of corporate entrepreneurial activity could be conceived as a process of organizational renewal. In the 1990s, researchers began to develop more comprehensive examinations of CE that focused on re-energizing companies and therefore increasing its abilities to develop innovations. The first and second decades of the 21st century witnessed a more sophisticated refinement of research topics in CE. In addition to research specific to the development of the three main domains of CE (corporate venturing, entrepreneurial orientation, and strategic entrepreneurship), there has been research on more specific areas of interest in CE including the implementation of CE, management levels, the individual corporate entrepreneur, models and metrics of CE, a deeper examination of internal corporate ventures, the international domain, firm size, family firms, ethics, and corporate venture capital. These areas illustrate the developmental expansion of interest in CE across different domains. Even with the continued expansion in the research on CE, there is so much that is still not understood nor researched well enough to fully advance the theoretical and empirical knowledge on CE. With the growing climate of disruption through external antecedents such as COVID-19, the entrepreneurial behavior of individuals within organizations becomes paramount and warrants a deeper understanding. Newer research questions on CE are emerging and further theoretical exploration should be the work of ongoing scholarly efforts.

Assessing the impact of corporate entrepreneurship in the financial performance of subsidiaries of Colombian business groups: under environmental dynamism moderation

Corporate entrepreneurship creates opportunities in employment, technological advances, value creation, and cultural transformation for entrepreneurial ecosystems, entrepreneurs, governments, economies and society around the globe. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of corporate entrepreneurship on the financial performance of subsidiaries in Colombian business groups under the moderating effect of the environmental dynamism, because the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and financial performance in emerging economies must differ from developed economies. Using a cross-sectional Structural Equation Modeling analysis, this study assessed the impact of entrepreneurial orientation and corporate venturing on the firm financial performance of 87 subsidiaries of Colombian business groups at different levels of environmental dynamism. This study also confirms that the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship and performance is context-dependent, and that entrepreneurial orientation has a strong and positive causal relationship with corporate venturing. Additionally, subsidiaries of Colombian business groups increase their financial performance when also does the entrepreneurial orientation, and decrease financial performance when so does corporate venturing. Furthermore, the results show that environmental dynamism does not have a moderating effect on the relationship between corporate entrepreneurship of subsidiaries in Colombian business groups and their performance. This paper would contribute to important areas in Latin America business, where such studies are scarce.