Author(s): Javier Nieto Cubero and Carolina Consolacion Segura
The generation of new business models and the renewal of competencies are crucial for mature companies’ survival in the long term. Corporate venturing is a recognized mechanism to ensure balancing exploration and exploitation activities in established corporations. Due to fundamental differences in business organizations and culture, and in risk taking behaviors, the integration of these new ventures in existing business units is difficult. A key factor, as well as one of the less studied, is to determine the venture readiness for the scaling up and the right moment to be incorporated in the existing business. Premature venture scaling up could provoke growth failure and reduced post-transition performance because of a number of unresolved market and technology uncertainties. On the contrary, when the corporate organization integrates the venture too late, the established business might miss its window of advantage position. Based on the results of an empirical study carried out in fifteen corporate venture innovation processes, we identified certain specific activities that will help determine the venture readiness and proper timing to scale up, and integrated the results of the empirical study with knowledge from extant literature, to develop a set of propositions for improving the success of the scaling up. These principles provide practical guidelines to improve corporate venture growth processes.