The corporate venturing industry is currently growing extremely rapidly, and to help it adopt best practices, Global Corporate Venturing has partnered with Andrew Gaule, a corporate venturing industry consultant, to set up the GCV Academy.
Gaule conceived the academy idea because he believes there is an educational vacuum about how to do corporate venturing. Gaule said: “I have been involved in the corporate venturing and innovation space for 14 years. Over the time it has grown to quite a size, with more than 1000 corporate venturing units as GCV has documented. Yet there still is not a coherent training or development programme. Many executives are qualified with venture capital training, which is transaction orientated. Yet the strategic approaches which you need in corporate venturing are not the focus, which is why I have teamed with GCV to create this academy.”
Gaule added: “We have had discussions with the GCV advisory board chaired by Claudia Fan Munce, of IBM Venture Capital, and a lot of industry veterans. We have also had conversations with the BVCA and NVCA corporate venture groups and they have said we are providing content they believe corporate venture units need.”
The first “Fundamentals of corporate venturing” course will be taking place on October 23 and 24 in London – register here. Alongside Gaule will be four other presenters, Tony Askew, of Reed Elsevier Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of media group Reed Elsevier, Neil Foster, of law firm Baker Botts, Mark Muth, of accountancy firm PwC and Jonathan Tudor, of Castrol Innoventures, the corporate venturing unit of lubricants company Castrol.
On November 25 and 26 the second course will run in Shanghai and there will be another course in February in California. There are other specialised programmes being developed, while a number of leading corporates and brands have already signed up and expressed interest.
The lessons will look at what are the different types of venturing process such as limited partner structures, partnering approaches, internal venturing and growing ventures, evergreen funds and general venture partnering, Gaule said.
The academy will also look at key attributes for people within unit, as well as corporate governance, input into the start-ups and board member as well as observer roles, he added.
It will also discuss the different partners organisations work with and “importantly” how to demonstrates strategic and financial benefits.
Global Corporate Venturing is proud to be supporting this venture, as it overlaps with our core goal of providing information to help corporate venturing become a well-defined discipline with best practices and a strong track record. Gaule has been a contributor to Global Corporate Venturing since its launch.