Scott Lenet, co-founder of Touchdown Ventures, a venture capital firm which manages funds on behalf of corporates, and Mike Redding, senior vice-president of corporate strategy and head of Accenture Ventures, management consulting firm Accenture’s corporate venturing unit, suggested corporate venturers can connect and align with their corporate parents by telling executives a compelling story.
Accenture is a platinum sponsor of Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation (GCVI) Summit 2020, while Touchdown Ventures is a silver sponsor of this year’s program.
Lenet and Redding explained there was often a lack of shared vision between corporate executive teams and their respective corporate venture capital units.
Redding highlighted that one of the reasons for mismatch between the corporate parent and CVC divisions was that most corporate executives had a tenure of about three years in a given role. When new senior members joined the corporate team, they naturally wanted to make their mark and incorporate changes, including in the CVC units.
Lenet and Redding agreed that CVC arms could improve connections with the corporate C-suite team by telling a double-edged story of financial and corporate success. Corporate venturers could quantify strategic key performance indicators as a measure of what success would look like to corporate executives, they noted.