Open Access

Patrick Haslanger

• Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) is an established vehicle for collaboration among a corporation and start-ups. Through equity investments paired with access to resources, capabilities and expert networks, corporations aim at supporting start-up development. Although the efficacy of CVCs is broadly discussed in literature, CVCs are often treated as uniform vehicles. Little is known about the impact of a CVC’s strategic direction and organizational design on the performance of start-ups. Moreover, Corporate Accelerator (CA) is a rather new form of corporate start-up engagement. Due to its newness limited research is available and literature urges – among others – to compare CA with more established form of corporate start-up support, especially CVC. Following these identified research gaps the dissertation consists of two empirical sections. In the first section, the effect of a CVCs organization and strategic direction on start-up performance is evaluated. Using a hand-collectedCorporate Venture Capital (CVC) is an established vehicle for collaboration among a corporation and start-ups. Through equity investments paired with access to resources, capabilities and expert networks, corporations aim at supporting start-up development. Although the efficacy of CVCs is broadly discussed in literature, CVCs are often treated as uniform vehicles. Little is known about the impact of a CVC’s strategic direction and organizational design on the performance of start-ups. Moreover, Corporate Accelerator (CA) is a rather new form of corporate start-up engagement. Due to its newness limited research is available and literature urges – among others – to compare CA with more established form of corporate start-up support, especially CVC. Following these identified research gaps the dissertation consists of two empirical sections. In the first section, the effect of a CVCs organization and strategic direction on start-up performance is evaluated. Using a hand-collected unique data-set of 210 start-ups under the management of 21 German CVCs, the study finds that organization of a CVC impacts the financial and strategic performance in multiple ways. Distinct hypotheses on portfolio size, concentration and fit, previous experience and CVC leadership are developed and tested empirically. The results show that CVC strategy and organization matter for start-up performance, however, disparate effects are observable for financial and strategic performance. Large portfolios enhance the performance of start-ups under CVC management, whereas both portfolio concentration and industry fit have a negative relationship with start-up performance. Moreover, more established CVCs support financial, yet impede strategic start-up performance. Lastly, it is detected that Previous industry experience of CVC personnel leads to financial start-up performance, whereas previous founder experience of CVC personnel strengthens strategic start-up performance. The second section aims at empirically reflecting the differences between CVC and CA, the start-ups under management and performance implications. The work is based on a novel multi-level and hand-collected dataset on financial and strategic performance covering 21 German CVCs with 210 start-ups and 15 German CAs with 132 start-ups. The results show that CVC and CA differ. CVCs tend to support older and further developed start-ups that operate more frequently in strategic proximity to the corporate parent, whereas CAs collaborate with younger and less mature start-ups across varying industries. In addition, CVCs stimulate start-up performance more than CAs do, even when matching CVC- and CA-managed start-ups based on their size and stage of development All in all, the work adds to literature in multiple ways as understanding of CVCs is deepened through a grounding in economic theories, uncovering of white spots determination of performance implications of a CVC’s strategic direction and organizational design and differentiation from a similar corporate venturing form, Corporate Accelerator. The work empirically supports that a differentiation of financial and strategic performance is required in corporate venturing research and sheds light on how CVCs should be organized to foster start-up performance. Moreover, it offers an enhanced understanding of CVC through an empirical comparison with the new phenomenon of CAs. Lastly, empirical evidence on CVC and CA is given based on a German dataset, in contrast to the majority of studies, being based on US data.…