Development of an Investment Taxonomy for Corporate Venturing Archetypes

Innovation is essential to create value for companies and customers and gain a competitive advantage. However, deciding which innovation project gets the limited financial resources in a world with increasing R&D expenditures and increasingly shorter innovation cycles becomes more difficult. To finance innovation that is not yet relevant to the core business, corporate venturing has been used to achieve strategic and/or financial goals.

Based on an existing systematic literature review (SLR), your task will be the development of a taxonomy that can be used to classify different corporate venturing archetypes. The Taxonomy will be developed with a Design Science Research approach. Ideally, the in-depth analysis will lead to a taxonomy based on state-of-the-art theoretical research (existing SLR) and practical case studies (to some extent already collected). Finally, the reliability of the taxonomy should be tested with industry managers.

Possible Research Questions (can be adapted to personal interests)

• What are the criteria for classifying corporate venturing archetypes
• How reliable is the developed taxonomy, and what are the strengths and weaknesses

Your Benefits

• Insights into current research topics
• Intensive supervision of work and support
• Possibility for a joint scientific publication
• Possibility to get insights into the Asset Management of a DAX company

Your Profile

• Interest in innovation and finance
• A highly self-motivated and reliable way of working (especially accuracy in scientific citation)
• Good self-organization and communication skills

Interested? Please send your grade statement, your CV, and a brief description of your motivation to Nils Dall: nils.dall∂partner.kit.edu