The increase in corporate venturing activity in the industrials sector has resulted in a number of new entrants to Global Corporate Venturing’s annual ranking of most inflential groups.
US-based industrial conglomerate General Electric has retained the top spot in the list (see table) for the impact of its Ecomagination and Healthymagination programmes, in addition to its long history investing in more than 1,000 companies since 1995 through GE Equity Capital.
But joining the top 20 this year have been Germany-based chemicals company Evonik for the thoughtfulness of its €100m ($130m) Corporate Venturing fund launch in January, as well as Sweden-based industrials group Saab on the back of its successful exit of C3 Technologies to technology maker Apple for about $260m (see related content for case study).
Evonik’s approach in creating a chief innovation officer role and hiring a senior manager, Bernhard Mohr, from peer BASF’s successful venture capital team reflects many of the best-in-class principles underpinning modern corporate venturing.
Mohr’s move mirrors a number of senior manager changes. Josef Wünsch, managing director of BASF Venture Capital since July 2006, became senior vice-president of modelling, formulation research and technology incubation at BASF at the start of the year.
Dirk Nachtigal, the other co-managing director of BASF Venture Capital for the past 10 years, now has sole control. Also in January, Yu-Xiang Liu (Leo Liu) became repre-sentative head of Netherlands-based industrials group DSM’s venturing unit in Shanghai after Jinyue Wang set up his 3N Partners firm.
In other moves, in August Andreas Hörnfeldt became managing director at Sweden-based Design Force after leaving local paper group Stora Enso Ventures. He had been a director at Design Force for the previous three years alongside Stora Enso.
Two months earlier, Joseph King joined US chemicals group DuPont as managing director of its ventures unit