The corporate venturing (CVC) industry has taken to heart Sue Siegel from GE Ventures’ message at the GCVI Summit in January that “its time is now” and at yesterday’s first day of the GCV Symposium really displayed its confidence and ambition to work with the broader venture community to help entrepreneurs scale up and globalise.
In its first public speech, we heard Jonathan Bullock from Softbank describe how and why it was able to raise $93bn for the Vision Fund and a wealth of topical insights by Nagraj Kashyap (Microsoft Ventures), George Ugras (IBM Ventures), Tony Askew (REV Venture Partners), Andrew Hinkly (Anglo American), Jacqueline Lasage Krause (Munich Re/HSB Ventures, David Mayhew (GE Ventures), Geoff McGrath (McLaren Applied Technologies), Bill Taranto (Merck Global Health Innovation) and Ana Segurado (Telefonica Open Future) into the challenges of managing larger CVC units and the requirements of next-generation leadership in the industry.
In turn, leading Silicon Valley VCs, such as Heidi Rozien (DFJ), said how they wanted to collaborate more with corporate partners.
The cutting edge technologies were showcased at the Future Planet Awards, chaired by architect Lord Norman Foster in partnership with Tsinghua Holdings Capital and Global University Venturing, and fascinating debates into whether we will see flying cars before autonomous vehicles between Francois Auque (Airbus Ventures) and Jason Ball (Qualcomm Ventures), while the exciting technologies and models of the future are being found across the world (fintech in Mexico and Brazil), artificial intelligence in the US and robotics in China and Japan according to those on the main stage and in the sector breakout sessions on energy, advanced manufacturing and health lead by Tom Whitehouse.
The diversity within CVC was one of the strongest aspects of the community, both by gender – our thanks to SVB for organising the Women in Venture lunch on day one – and ethnicity but also in terms of openness to new approaches and collaborations with those wanting to put the customer, the entrepreneur, first, including through new business models and goals, such as the circular economy and impact venturing in a panel led by Charmian Love from Quantum Ventures.
Parminder Vir, CEO of the Tony Elumelu Foundation in Nigeria, challenged the audience to explore greater reverse innovation and takes its successful model in supporting 10,000 entrepreneurs from among Africa’s 54 countries to the rest of the world.
This plurality and thought-leadership was on display in the supercharged Unpanels session run by Paul Morris from UK’s Department for International Trade. We ended the first day with a packed Gala dinner and powerful after-dinner speech by Sir George Zambellas, former First Sea Lord – the head of Britain’s Royal Navy – on the importance of learning from mistakes and trusting and working with the young.
And while the Navy has an average age of 23, probably those most used to dealing with the young and inspiring their research, innovation and invention are the universities, so it was a delight to hear and see so much interaction between university venturers and CVCs.