There is an Underlying Structure to the Art of Corporate Venturing and Innovation
BMG’s uniquely codified best practices milestones and red flags in venture and unit development frameworks is the result of more than 20 years spent watching corporate venturing stop-start cycles and unrealistic pressures for results.
Our approach is evidence-based because we firmly believe that the ‘devil is in the [operational] details’. These best practices frameworks, systems, and engagement methodologies help global 1000 corporations speed the impact of venturing and innovation, both within their enterprises and on the world stage, building new businesses that will fuel their growth.
Framing Corporate Venturing Program Development
As CV professionals know well, there are many moving parts and degrees of “3D complexity” involved in developing and syncopating all the pieces of the CV program puzzle—many things that must come together in the right ways at the right times, all customized to be adaptable and extensible in specific parent company environments.
Three fundamental questions inform Fifth Wave CV programs:
How important is this program to corporate strategy and optional paths to staying power?
How fast is trajectory to performance indicators and impact?
How resilient is the program/team—is it able to remain agile/adaptive and intact across the spectrum of corporate changes and shifts?
Bell Mason Group developed a model that started from an embedded cross-sector, cross-industry analysis of what is the same/what is different in successful program development and distilled it into a higher-level framework and set of design guidelines that can be applied to all:
The Bell Mason Venture Development Framework
The Bell Mason Framework for Corporate Venture Development describes the 5 Phase process that is customized both for building incubated ventures within a corporation or for a portfolio company investment by a corporate CVC unit.
Unlike traditional product development stage/gate processes, this Framework describes best practice requirements by stage for the entire venture business, not just for the product, and does not impose corporate requirements and overhead that stifle the agility that growing ventures need. The Framework has been used to evaluate more than 2000 ventures and has been licensed worldwide for due diligence, management and reporting for portfolios of incubated and CVC venture investments.
Bell Mason Group works with clients to customize and apply what we’ve learned and the operating processes we’ve developed to build sustainable venturing groups across a range of industries and venturing models.
