Building Corporate Ventures: People, Teams, and Culture

Processes Don’t Innovate, People Do.

Corporate innovation has long been a misfit inside existing business. Corporate innovation teams battle for resources and attention, yet often lose out to slower growing but more profitable operating businesses. CEOs want to be more innovative, but the high costs and high uncertainty of the innovation process tend to make them cautious. As a result, corporate innovation is an area of high activity and low productivity, with relatively few corporations achieving standout results.

We are living in a moment of extraordinary technological change. Companies are spending billions on generative AI, graphene, quantum computing, and a dozen other emerging technologies. These breakthroughs have the potential to upend entire industries. Converting such opportunities does not require better methods – there is no gap in our knowledge. What we need are the people, teams, and culture that can play the same role inside corporations that entrepreneurs play for startups.

This ebook is composed of four essays written by members of the Change Logic team, each tackling a specific practical step companies can take to accelerate their corporate innovation progress.

From this eBook, you will learn:

• The characteristic qualities of successful corporate innovators
• How to find corporate innovators in your organization
• The essential elements of an Explore Unit
• Practical approaches to recruiting talent for an innovation team
• Models for transforming organizational culture