How Corporate Venture Capitalists (CVC) enhance strategic ambidexterity in large companies
Résumé
Today’s major companies have to innovate in profoundly uncertain environments. To take advantage of this notorious unpredictability in most markets, they must simultaneously try to explore, in search of future opportunities, while continuing to make the most of the business model that gives them their current revenues. This obvious tension between the exploration and exploitation trajectories followed by major groups has already been widely discussed in the academic literature. The interest of this article lies in promoting the original idea that Corporate Venture Capitalists (CVCs) can be seen as instruments at the service of companies’ strategic ambidexterity. By creating and developing their own investment funds, large corporations can successfully take different kinds of options on the future.