One of the great privileges of tracking corporate venturing is it provides insights into many of the key areas of the economy, which often share few things except that these sectors are being transformed quickly by the relentless rise in the importance of technology.
This month we have been working on our energy and natural resources sector feature, and it is clear that sector’s corporate venturing is seeing a significant uptick in activity, despite the weak sentiment toward the clean-tech sector which had been a hot topic only a few years ago. Yet booming activity in technologies related to the oil and gas groups’ core activities, as well as support for more enticing clean technology investments is resulting in a large influx into the sector.
Activity included US-based oil major Chevron launching a new fund and Anglo-Dutch natural resources company Shell revitalising its activities through its Shell Technology Ventures unit, with a pledge to invest hundreds of millions of dollars. Our profile this month also looks at how UK-based oil major BP’s corporate venturing unit is looking to “lead the next generation of corporate venturing” after it won internal support for venturing.
In the past month we have also been in New York presenting our Future of Media report sponsored by US-based law firm Baker Botts.
Like the energy sector, the excitement around corporate venturing in that city is palpable, and it was a highly enjoyable few days talking with the city’s inhabitants about how New York is quickly becoming a vital part of the technology boom.
As a financial, media and consumer goods centre, New York looks likely to be a key part of the next wave of technological change, as the industries it has long specialised in become increasingly technological. The general sense from our trip is all industries in the city are well aware of the need to catch the technological beat and significant programmes are being set up to stimulate start-ups in the city and elsewhere.
Also be sure to read our quarterly data supplement, starting overleaf. It has been a busy quarter and dealmaking has been stellar. US-based search engine Google once again was the most active dealmaker, followed by Intel Capital and be sure to read the excellent analysis penned by our news editor Quentin Carruthers.
As ever the many articles by our guest contributors are great, including Corven Networks’ Andrew Gaule interviewing the UK government’s UK Trade & Investment’s Chris Wade, academics Boris Battistini and Martin Haemmig looking at early stage, and Mark Muth, formerly of Unilever Ventures, mulling how he thinks the next wave of corporate venturing will play out.
Last week our editorial team was in London for our first Global University Venturing Summit.
This highly exciting event, which was near fully booked, shed light on how academic innovators are commercialising their activities.
This area of innovation is at once one of the most intellectually exciting, but also difficult, and we hope the event and the publication contributed to making the commercialisation of university intellectual property easier.
As we head towards the end of the year, we are canvassing the corporate venturing industry for their views, for our year-end and outlook issues in December and January respectively. Let us know how you think 2013 has been, and what you expect in 2014 at the link: www.surveymonkey.com/s/GCV2013
In November, we are also set to publish our annual Powerlist detailing the movers and shakers in the corporate venturing world. Let us know your thoughts for this and all developments in the industry.