Lifetime achievement winner Bob Ackerman, while being an independent venture capitalist as one of the managing directors of venture firm Allegis Capital, has had a long-running role as one of the figureheads of corporate venturing. The firm has made a name for itself through its corporate partnerships, and is also one of the top 10 venture investors globally in the hot cyber-security asset class.
Ackerman has been a leading figure in the Corporate Venturing and Innovation Partnering conference, having been involved since it began 15 years ago.
Yet this year he stepped back from the conference chair, a role he has held for many years. Ackerman has also been a thought leader in his teaching of venture capital and entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at University of California, Berkeley, and in his regular newsletters and columns across the venture trade press.
For example, in a 2004 newsletter Ackerman expressed thoughts that have become widespread among those now practising corporate venturing, identifying an “impedance mismatch” between entrepreneurs. He said: “While [it] may be intellectually obvious [that entrepreneurs and corporations should partner], it is not easily done.
“There is an enormous impedance mismatch between the deliberate, thoughtful approach to decision-making of big companies and the light-speed pace of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs want to bring about a disruptive technology as rapidly as possible, while large corporations would prefer an orderly change, on their terms. Both organisations must change their DNA to allow them not only to coexist, but almost to virtually mate.”
Ackerman, a larger-than-life figure well known across the corporate, venture and technology worlds, also runs a winery, Ackerman Vineyards, which is “an important part of his life”, according to his communications adviser Jennifer Jones.
While Ackerman will long be dealing with corporates in his work at Allegis in the future, his career at the firm makes him a fitting winner of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.