The second annual Global Corporate Venturing awards supplement is a celebration of the industry and how it helps entrepreneurs, the venture ecosystem and parent companies make the world a better place and deliver on their strategic and financial goals.
This year’s selection of winners is recognition of their achievements but there are innumerous other successes every day, many of which go unrecognised by the mainstream media, which for too long has focused on independent venture capital firms rather than the alternative members of venture syndicates.
These awards help provide focus and recognition for an industry that has sometimes struggled to promote its achievements.
This is important because, as Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist Earl Miller put it in an article in the magazine Scientific American: "Success has a much greater influenceon the brain than failure."
Aside from reversion to the mean that afflicts allenterprises in a cyclical and volatile asset class, the challenge for the winners in the following pages, as well as the other 650 corporate venturing units round the world, is to continue deliv-ering on the promise their money and support can bring to internal and external innovators – the intrapreneurs as well as the entrepreneurs.
The firmsthat have succeeded over the years and decades have usually similar characteristics regardless of industry or region their parents operate in. Last year, the best practices shown by the industry created a mnemoic: succeeding.
S Step up – be able to lead or price a deal if you want the same terms
U Unite – relationships take time to build but forever to repair
C Communicate – with internal and external stakeholders
C Clear aims – need to be set and then follow through on commitments
E Encapsulate – market insights to help value deals
E Encompass – the organisation and deliver it to help the portfolio
D Do no harm – by avoiding squashing the entrepreneur
I Independence – of funding and/or organisation structure
N Now – move in time with others when events happen
G Good – selection and timing of deals
This mnemonic is as relevant for this year’s winners, for which congratula-tions, and please join us in covering the accomplishments and what can be improved in the industry over the next 12 months by, to quote David Hume, letting "truth spring from argument among good friends".
Awards categories:
Firm of the Year: selection of Naspers as the most influential corporate venturing unit from the 10 most influential groups from all the sectors, as chosen by Global Corporate Venturing in the preceding year.
Fundraising/Launch of the Year: Chesapeake NG Ventures as the biggest of most sophisticated launch or fundraisng.
Exit of Year: Amobee was the best sale from a corporate venturing portfolio.
Investment of Year: GreatPoint Energy was the investment that has garnered most praise or positive attention.
Personality of the Year: Martin Kelly, partner at IBM, as someone who has helped the industry most by their leadership over the past year.
Industry Legend: a lifetime achievement award goes to Roy Davis, ex-president of Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation.
Methodology:
This year, in all bar one of the awards, Global Corporate Venturing selected a shortlist and the winner was selected by the magazine’s advisory board at the end of March. Editor James Mawson chose the lifetime achievement award.