Corporate Venturing Q&A

Corporate venturing is an innovation strategy where established companies partner with startups or scaleups to co-develop new solutions. It goes beyond financial investments; it’s about shared innovation and growth.

Open innovation is the overarching model of collaborating beyond company walls. Corporate venturing is one of its most effective execution strategies.

• Access to cutting-edge technology.
• Faster innovation cycles.
• Entry into new markets and customer groups.
• Strengthened agility and competitiveness.

Startups gain access to the corporate’s scale, networks, funding, and credibility, accelerating their growth.

Most failures stem from poor partner selection, lack of embedding, cultural clashes, or treating venturing as side projects instead of strategic growth drivers.

RevelX’s framework consists of five steps:

1. Discovering opportunities.
2. Matchmaking with business challenges.
3. Exploring use cases through experiments.
4. Creating proofs of concept.
5. Launching and scaling successful ventures.

Take the RevelX Corporate Venturing Readiness Assessment. It benchmarks your capabilities against 25 best practices and provides actionable recommendations.

It complements build (internal innovation) and buy (M&A). Together, build–buy–partner form the full innovation mix that drives corporate growth.

Only once three conditions are proven: problem-solution fit, solution-market fit, and business model fit. Scaling too soon is a common cause of failure.

Culture is critical. Corporates must create openness to external ideas, reduce bureaucracy, and foster trust-based relationships. Without this, even the best partnerships fail.

By establishing clear workflows, embedding governance, and using end-to-end innovation platforms. RevelX works with partners like Qmarkets to set up professional, scalable venturing systems.

While all industries can leverage venturing, sectors facing rapid disruption (like financial services, mobility, energy, and healthcare) particularly benefit from partnering with startups and scaleups.

Corporate venturing is broader: it includes partnerships, joint development, accelerators, and innovation labs. CVC is specifically about making financial investments in startups.

Success can be measured by:

• Speed to market of new solutions.
• Revenue or cost-saving impact.
• Strategic value (e.g., entering new markets).
• Health of partnerships and alliance performance.

Start small. Begin with a readiness assessment, identify a few strategic growth challenges, and explore external partnerships. RevelX can guide you through a tailored Venturing Discovery Workshop.

As leading innovation management consultants, RevelX helps organizations design, align, and run corporate venturing programs that deliver measurable growth.

Curious about your organization’s venturing power? Contact RevelX today for a free 30-minute innovation consult.