6th GLORIA Workshop: Corporate Venturing for R&I: Practitioner’s views and policy questions

Recognising the increasing role that corporate venturing (CV), in general, and corporate venture capital (CVC), in particular, play in company innovation strategies, the European Commission organised on 23rd May 2022 a workshop with CVC practitioners to better understand the features of and rationales for CVC / CV and the role public policy could play to facilitate its expansion. The workshop confirms the Growing Phenomenon of CV in Europe; an increasing number of recurring CVC investors and growing investments, reaching 14.5b$ in 2019 from 3.6b$ in 2013. Despite this increase, CVC investments in start-ups are still modest with regard to the overall size of the VC market. They are modest also with regard to the corporate’s investment in internal R&D, representing about 2,6% of the sum spent on corporate R&D. In line with the overall venture capital (VC) market, corporate VC is also less mature in the EU than in the USA. The panel discussed options to improve this situation, geared to create an efficient pan-European market for cross-border deals, such as promoting VC networks, improving the visibility of start-ups (particularly outside the country of the headquarters of the mother company) or measures to strengthen linkages between start-ups and corporates at early stages.