Corporate Venturing Virtual Special Issue

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2360
• Date: 01 December 2016
• Published date: 01 December 2016

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Corporate Venturing Virtual Special Issue

Gary Dushnitsky and Julian Birkinshaw

For established firms operating in dynamic markets, a key strategic imperative is to be alert

and responsive to new opportunities (Stevenson and Jarillo, 1980). As part of this

entrepreneurial mindset, many large firms have opted to pursue corporate venturing activities.

These include Internal Corporate Venturing initiatives, whereby a firm stimulates

entrepreneurial activity and new business development within its boundaries, and also

External Corporate Venturing activities, whereby the firm engages with external

constituencies such as entrepreneurial ventures and venture capital firms.

This Virtual Special Issue (VSI) brings together seminal studies that have appeared in

Strategic Management Society journals over the last 35 years, which collectively advance our

understanding of the corporate venturing phenomenon. The VSI by no means offers an

exhaustive perspective on what is by now a vast and dynamic literature. Rather, it points to a

number of interesting studies which have shaped our knowledge of corporate venturing.

Corporate venturing is a form of corporate entrepreneurship that includes a focused and

(ideally) persistent vehicle for channelling a firm’s innovation efforts. These vehicles have a

variety of names, including corporate venturing unit, venture capital unit, new venture

division, incubator and skunkworks. The goal of corporate venturing initiatives is to build (at

times, with a view of creative destruction) on corporate resources and capabilities in order to

introduce new technologies, enter new markets, and drive overall corporate growth.

Accordingly, it is often perceived as a way to help firms balance exploration and exploitation.

To that end, corporate venturing programs, whether internally or externally oriented, share a

key structural feature, namely some level of separation from the core businesses. Research

has shown that it is not a trivial task to get the level of separation right. Corporate venturing

initiatives often fail to get a good balance between encouraging high-risk and potentially

high-growth activities with harnessing the resources and knowledge of the firm.