Create Competitive Advantage with Innovation (Collection)

Chapter 2. Corporate Venturing: Best of Both Worlds or Venturing Too Far?

"If you put a circle around Silicon Valley, it would look a lot like Enron. But it's easier to innovate at Enron, because we have a lot less friction."—Jeffrey Skilling

Silicon Valley's success during the 1990s helped further stimulate an already surging interest in corporate venturing. The basic goal of the corporate venturing movement was to emulate and simulate a venture capital–driven startup model within much larger, more mature and established companies. Silicon Valley was the prototype. The challenge was to bring this sort of entrepreneurial energy inside the corporation—even to better it. Pursuing a "simulated startup" approach required significant changes in the ...