Corporate venturing investments (CVC) are a well-established form of equity investments by large corporations in external start-up companies. Unlike other sources of institutional venture capital investments, CVC not only provides new firms with financial resources but also offers the opportunity for both the parent firm – the investing company – as well as for the start-ups in the CVC portfolio to generate and capture strategic value resulting from overlaps in the business activities of the companies.
But as corporations try to learn from the mistakes of the past, when they exaggerated cyclical trends in the broader venture capital industry, companies now have a more focused and strategic approach to corporate venturing.
Research as well as practice show today’s corporate venturing activities are evolving from an emphasis on financial investments towards an emphasis on strategic value. However, it has been harder to measure the success of a CVC in meeting its strategic aims than for financial returns, which can be simply tracked through equity invested and returned.
Strategic reasons for CVC investments can cover a broad spectrum, both on the investor side and the investee side. From the investing company’s perspective, the typical motivation for making investments is both to explore and to exploit new opportunities.
The explorational value of CVC thus lies in the generation of general insights into the development of markets and technologies, whereas the exploitational value lies in enabling specific, applied combinations of new technologies and resources for the parent firm, such as through gaining access to complementary technologies from startups.
From the perspective of the portfolio company, the CVC relationship can add value to their company in general, through management advice, operational support and added reputation and credibility, referred to as company- related value, or to specific products, through access to complementary technologies and by gaining easy access to channels to market, referred to asproduct-related value.
While placing an increased emphasis on the strategic value of CVC activities, companies at the same time have to change their approach to measuring and monitoring the performance of their investment activities. While well-developed metrics for financial performance of CVCinvestments can be adopted from the institutional venture capital industry, keeping track of the strategic value of the CVC relationships seems to be a bigger challenge.
A study conducted at the Centre for Technology Management at the University of Cambridge addresses this challenge by giving evidence of metrics and performance indicators currently used in practice. The study relies on observations of nine in-depth case studies of the wellestablished CVC programmes of large multinational companies.
The study found that no holistic metrics system exists which allows evaluation of the overall strategic value created by CVC activities. Instead, individual indicators for specific aspects are used to keep track of the performance of the CVC unit and the strategic relationships between the parent firm and the portfolio start-ups. The chart on the next page give a comprehensive and cumulative overview of those metrics and indicators observed in the nine CVC programme case studies.
This overview reveals a number of relevant findings, which should be considered by companies setting up metric systems for strategic value.
First, it shows that a range of different soft metrics (casebased success stories and examples), quantifiable, nonmonetary metrics (numbers which refer to a frequency of events or activities) and quantifiable, monetary metrics (monetary sums which indicate value creation) can be used for the evaluation of CVC programmes.
A large group of the studied companies emphasised the
importance of "success stories" – for example short stories to illustrate where CVC activities had led to a specific relationship, synergies or reduced risks – for securing top-level as well as business-unit-level management support. Those often seem to be found more effective for demonstrating value creation than complex metric systems. Nonetheless, additional quantifiable metrics are seen to be important, in particular for monitoring the various processes.
Second, the figure illustrates that metrics and indicators are used for monitoring different relationships between the players. Within the figure, sets of metrics are allocated to the channels through which the value is transferred within the CVC triad of the CVC unit, the parent firm and the start-ups. This shows companies should aim to use a broad range of different metrics to reflect the different strategic interests of the players. For example, metrics for the value generated for the start-up focus mainly on prerevenue indicators such as number of customers and orders placed, and thus focus on the general generation of revenues, whereas metrics used for the parent firm are covering a broader spectrum, from risk reduction and created synergies to new customers and revenues.
Third, the figure highlights that metrics currently in use by companies cover different aspects of strategic value to a very different degree. For example, the largest set of metrics focuses on strategic value related to specific projects undertaken directly between the parent firm and the startup. Those projects typically focus on exploiting opportunities around specific technologies and products, resulting in products whose performance can be measured comparatively easily through revenue and prerevenue indicators.
The explorational value of CVC on the other hand seems to be much more difficult to measure. In the case studies, no quantifiable metrics have been observed to indicate generated explorational value such as market knowledge or understanding of technological trends. Instead, it is demonstrated only indirectly by tracking the general investment activity of the CVC unit (number of investments) and by demonstrating that investments have reduced risks and that the business units are satisfied with the services of the CVC unit.
Even though not explicitly mentioned in the case studies, it could furthermore be argued that putting quantifiable metrics on explorational value dimensions might not even be desirable. Communicating the message that future value should be measured could limit the openness towards unknown future solutions and thus reduce the value of insights into new markets and technologies itself.
A somewhat surprising result from the study is the observation that companies did not seem to monitor the activity of their CVC unit regarding the "matchmaking" processes – establishing and facilitating relationships between the parent firm’s business units and the start-ups in the portfolio).
This stands in contrast to the observation that facilitation processes are viewed to be crucial for the future success of CVC activities. Future efforts for the development of metrics and performance indicators could thus focus on introducing systems for monitoring the matchmaking processes.
If you are interested in accessing further findings from this research project, contact Johann Jakob Napp, Centre for Technology Management, Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, 17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge CB3 0FS, UK or email johann.j.napp@cantab.net.
Findings from the study regarding the operational setup for capturing strategic value will be covered in the next issue of this publication.