| Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) an important, externally focused mechanism to trigger exploration and strategic renewal in established organizations. In this dissertation, I examine the primary research question: Under what conditions do established firms engage in CVC? I conduct a qualitative field study and a quantitative archival study to explore this question. The field study points to the employment of CVC investments as growth options by firms for the exploration of new opportunities. Using insights from the field study, I develop a theory to explain firm participation in CVC activity by integrating insights from the real options literature and an inducement-opportunity perspective of interfirm collaboration. Based on my theory, I propose hypotheses regarding the influence of industry- and firm-level conditions on firms' CVC activity. I test these hypotheses on a sample of Fortune 500 firms that I observe longitudinally from 1990-2000, using panel regression methods. I find that incumbent firms in industries with rapid technological change, high competitive intensity and weak appropriability regimes, are likely to engage in CVC activity. Moreover, firms that possess greater technological resources, stronger marketing capabilities, and a more diverse venturing experience, are more likely to engage in CVC activity as well. My findings suggest that while environmental factors induce firms to explore via CVC investing, their inducements and opportunities to pursue CVC are constrained by the competences they can exploit in the process. Thus, the process of exploration is driven by considerations of effective exploitation. The importance of CVC for organizational exploration motivates an additional research question: How do CVC units enable exploratory learning in parent firms? To address this question, I inductively analyze my field study data. The evidence indicates the need for CVC units to concurrently manage the contrasting dimensions of exploration. A CVC unit needs to institute processes to search for novel knowledge through its CVC investments, as well as to integrate this knowledge within the parent firm. Effective integration of knowledge results in the evolutionary generation of further opportunities for investment. I discuss the implications of my dissertation research for research on corporate entrepreneurship, real options, organizational ambidexterity and dynamic capabilities. |
