AAA The digital age spells opportunity in 2014

The digital age spells opportunity in 2014

The coming year has the air of excitement already for those involved in corporate venturing. Software has begun to impact on all areas of business. Start-ups are some of the best placed organisations to react quickly this trend, and smart corporations will at the same time help these businesses achieve scale.

Arguably this trend could finally ensure that a corporate venturing strategy becomes a must-have for every cor-poration rather than merely a nice-to-have. The question many may soon face will be not: Are you corporate ventur-ing? but rather: Why aren’t you?

Take a look overleaf at what our respondents to a yearly outlook survey think are likely to be the big trends in 2014.

Some respondents were bullish on early-stage, while executives were keen to implement organisational change by boosting the team as well as looking to improve interac-tion with entrepreneurs outside the organisation.

There was a wide range of preferential terms many groups looked for, and we looked at the deal strategies of particular corporate venturing units, although a large number of units look for nothing more than standard terms in their negotiations.

Extrapolating from the news of last year, in a discussion with our news editor Quentin Carruthers, who is leading a forthcoming data supplement, we have a sense various trends are about to take off.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas it seemed everyone was betting on the internet of everything and wearable computing to be the big technology trend of 2014. It will be interesting to see how quickly companies and consumers adapt to these trends.

The pick-up in corporate accelerators and incuba-tors continued to be frenetic in 2013, and how this trend evolves in 2014 is one to watch. It is perhaps a fair bet that this will pick up further during the year, although one has to bear in mind how John Doerr during the internet bubble labelled incubators “incinerators”. Perhaps this time it will be different, given how the mobile revolution and the ease in setting up a website have significantly brought down the costs of setting up a company.

The establishment of global ecosystems will also continue apace. The US remains corporate venturing’s core hub for investment activity, but it will be interesting to see whether other geographies begin to attract market share.

Our sister publication Global University Venturing is tracking how universities are trying to up their game in the commercialisation of innovation. It may be that next year is the time when university venturing begins to hit a similar tipping point, which we saw in the 2010 period when many began to jump into corporate venturing.

Last year there was a strong exit pipeline for cyber-security, and our forthcoming Baker Botts-sponsored white paper on the Future of Cyber Security in February will look at this trend in depth.

The level of activity backing marketing companies has also been high, and it will be interesting to see whether this sector sees consolidation, or continues to pick up the pace, with consumer desire for all things digital continuing to rise.

It was heartening to see a strong biotech exit pipeline last year, as that sector has been hit by issues in the inde-pendent financial venture capital space, and hopefully this area will remain buoyant in 2014.

We are also hoping that 2014 will be the year in which clean-tech bounces back from a 2013 that was possibly that sector’s nadir. However, many people continue to be sceptical about the potential for clean-tech.

Let us know what you think are the big trends to watch out for this year. We can frame these issues at our annual London symposium on May 20-21, with tickets now on sale (www.gcvsymposium.com). Tell us what you think we should be talking about.

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