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Benchmarking global corporate venture
strategies
For Unilever
Situation
Unilever set up its corporate venturing
activities in 2002 with the objectives of:
- Creating options for growth, by either taking
stakes in interesting companies or creating new businesses,
which could take Unilever or it brands into new areas
- Accessing emerging technology by investing
in technology start-ups
- Exploiting Unilever IP by creating new businesses
for spin-out
In developing the approach Unilever tried to
learn from other corporates' experiences in venturing as well
as from the venture capital and private equity industry which
led to three key elements:
- Building a corporate venturing model as close
as possible to a real venture capital model
- Separating the different roles and tasks
for venturing into different funds, i.e. creating new businesses,
investing in development stage of growth companies and investing
in technology
- Involving venture capital
and private equity partners in our funds or investee businesses,
to ensure that they are managed as real businesses not corporate
projects
Objecitves
As part of a review into the progress
being made by its corporate venturing activities, Unilever
felt it was important to understand what other corporates
were doing and commissioned H-I network to conduct research
into key practices in leading global corporate venturing units.
Approach and Results
H-I Network benchmarked Unilever's
performance and experiences against a select group of over
20 leading corporate venturing practitioners deriving key
findings from surveys and round-table discussions. Visit our
research page to
download an Excecutive Summary of our findings.
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H-I
Publication: