Corporate Venture Capital – A review of the state of the art

Abstract

Established companies are increasingly pressured by disruptive innovations or business models from emerging companies, so-called start-ups.  This poses a considerable risk to the market position of established firms.  Start-up collaborations are, therefore, attracting more and more attention to bring innovations into the company quickly and cost-effectively by working with start-ups.  Presently, there is a professional approach to investing in start-ups driven by the necessity for external innovation, globalization, and digital technologies that have widespread industry impact, such as data analytics and artificial intelligence.  The concept is corporate venture capital (CVC), which comprises equity-financed investments in emerging, unlisted companies.  CVC emerged in the 1960s in the US and has developed into a rapidly growing and increasingly global phenomenon that is experiencing growing popularity and recognition not only in practice but also in academia.  This article conducts an analysis of the literature on corporate venture capital from 2002 to 2023 in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, utilizing the Bibliometrix package for the R statistical programming language.  By carefully analyzing publication volume, authorship, keywords, clustering, and timeline maps, this research identifies recent research developments, gaps, and insights of interest and value for the research and the developing practice of CVCs.