Alcatel-Lucent has hired Max Straube as a vice-president of its corporate venturing unit ahead of making its first deal since effectively relaunching the team late last year.
Straube is overseeing investments for Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, which includes external and internal deals.
He will work with Bart Shigemura, head of Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, having previously been on the board of network equipment maker Yotta Yotta when it hired Shigemura as chief executive.
Straube has also worked as a general partner of venture capital firm OCG Ventures and a managing director at Saints Advisors.
Shigemura took over as head of Alcatel-Lucent Ventures when John Riggs moved in October to become vice-president of innovation and growth services for the global communications and technology group of PRTM Management Consultants and Wes Cole moved internally to become chief of staff for Alcatel-Lucent’s wireless division.
Straube said their hires came as Alcatel-Lucent was "on track to execute" the strategy that had been in preparations for the past five years after the merger of Alcatel with Lucent and had been appreciated by the stock market.
The Ventures team operates within Alcatel-Lucent’s Bell Labs research division and manages money off the parent’s balance sheet, looking to invest $1m to $5m per deal.
The team also helps its engineers and scientist incubate technologies as standalone businesses that can then be spun off or incorporated inside the business, according to Straube.
He added there had been no fundamental shift in strategy with the handover from Riggs and Cole but greater discipline brought to internal deals so they would be judged by venture criteria, which meant taking greater risks and higher growth expectations.
Straube said the team had agreed its first external deal, which had been "embraced" by Alcatel-Lucent’s cloud-based group.
He said all deals needed to pass both strategic and financial metrics before being considered.