Corporate venturing is of great strategic importance in today's world of accelerated change in business and technology. In one of the best and most current books on the subject, Van den Bosch and Duysters guide readers through carefully-selected case studies that will enlighten the practitioner and academic alike.' - Dana T. Redford, Portuguese Catholic University and President, Platform for Entrepreneurship Education in Portugal'Before an innovation gets the green light in large corporations, it needs to be proved that the innovation will be successful: successful and lucrative. And that's exactly what you can't ever know in advance for a true innovation. Corporate Venturing: Organizing for Innovation shows how corporate oil tankers can take full advantage of innovative speedboats.' - Danny Mekic, Entrepreneur Large organizations can struggle to keep up with today's fast-changing market and technological developments. However, an increasing number of businesses now engage in corporate venturing as a way to enhance their innovation process. This book fills the gap in management literature by providing a detailed account of best practices in the organization and management of such corporate ventures. The authors highlight eight main cases of organizations that employ corporate venturing within their firms. The cases illustrate how leading corporations organize their corporate venturing process and highlight the best practices that can be distilled from their experience. Jessica van den Bosch and Geert Duysters explain how the ideal corporation is one that is able to combine the scale and pure power of a large organization with the creativity, flexibility and resilience of a small one. With a compendium of useful case studies, and practical guidelines on corporate venturing, this book will appeal to managers, consultants and all leaders involved in the process of creating new ventures within large organizations. Contents: 1. Corporate Venturing in Health Care: A Cbusinez Case 2. Corporate Venturing in the Chemical Industry: A Colourful Case 3. BAC BV: The Successful Exit of a Unilever Spin-Out 4. Document Services Valley: A Lifeline for the Printing Industry? 5. Innovation Projects and Venturing at Rabobank: Creating a New Dynamic 6. Eindhoven University of Technology's Innovationlab: Commercializing Scientific Research for Scientific Research Itself 7. Sanomaventures: Innovating by Attracting Entrepreneurial Talent 8. Nrc.Next: Reinventing Printed News 9. Discussion and Conclusions 10. Top 10 Best Practices for Managing Corporate Ventures Index

This innovative new book explores the structure, growth and effectiveness of virtual communities in computer-mediated environments. In spite of initial enthusiasm, much uncertainty remains about the prospects of virtual teams and the technology that supports their collaboration. This book seeks to confront these issues and offers a unique insight into the realities of virtual working. Combining both software and organizational learning perspectives, this important volume investigates the role of computer-mediated-communication (CMC) in dispersed teams, focusing particularly on the communication processes involved. By combining theoretical and case study material, the authors argue that successful teamwork can be achieved without face-to-face contact, even whilst undertaking unstructured and non-routine tasks. These comprehensive case studies show that by changing the structure of the organization in addition to the use of advanced technologies, new and important patterns of communication have emerged in virtual communities.An essential resource for academics working in the fields of management science and organizational learning, this valuable study will also be of interest to managers, practitioners and the wider open source software community as a whole.

This unique book focuses on the link between different types of culture (national, corporate, professional) and the success of strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions. Over the past decades we have seen a significant increase in the number of strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions. Despite this proliferation many recent studies have reported high failure rates. This failure is often attributed to cultural differences between partners, which has led to a growing body of literature on the subject. To date, most of these studies have focused on national and corporate culture, whereas this book also places particular emphasis on the importance of culture at the professional level. The authors clearly show that all three levels of culture may have a profound impact upon the ultimate success or failure of alliances, mergers and acquisitions. Researchers in the field of international business, strategic management, and strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions will find this book to be of invaluable interest. Managers in multinational corporations and international business students should also not be without this important resource.

The global economy is changing rapidly and multinational corporations (MNCs) are at the forefront of this transformation. The book provides novel and profound analyses of how MNCs and emerging economies are related, and how this relationship affects the dynamics of the global economy. In particular, the authors deal with the nexus between multinationals, emerging economies and innovation from a variety of different perspectives. Innovation is regarded as a core driving force in the global economy but the authors show how it can impede as well as encourage sustainability. Multinationals and Emerging Economies brings together insights from business studies and economics, and combines concise theoretical discussion with empirical analyses of unique data. Researchers and graduate students in the fields of international business, international economics, international relations, innovation studies and strategy will find much of interest to them throughout the book. It will also be an invaluable tool for policy-makers in economics and commerce.

Corporate venturing is of great strategic importance in today's world of accelerated change in business and technology. In one of the best and most current books on the subject, Van den Bosch and Duysters guide readers through carefully-selected case studies that will enlighten the practitioner and academic alike.' - Dana T. Redford, Portuguese Catholic University and President, Platform for Entrepreneurship Education in Portugal'Before an innovation gets the green light in large corporations, it needs to be proved that the innovation will be successful: successful and lucrative. And that's exactly what you can't ever know in advance for a true innovation. Corporate Venturing: Organizing for Innovation shows how corporate oil tankers can take full advantage of innovative speedboats.' - Danny Mekic, Entrepreneur Large organizations can struggle to keep up with today's fast-changing market and technological developments. However, an increasing number of businesses now engage in corporate venturing as a way to enhance their innovation process. This book fills the gap in management literature by providing a detailed account of best practices in the organization and management of such corporate ventures. The authors highlight eight main cases of organizations that employ corporate venturing within their firms. The cases illustrate how leading corporations organize their corporate venturing process and highlight the best practices that can be distilled from their experience. Jessica van den Bosch and Geert Duysters explain how the ideal corporation is one that is able to combine the scale and pure power of a large organization with the creativity, flexibility and resilience of a small one. With a compendium of useful case studies, and practical guidelines on corporate venturing, this book will appeal to managers, consultants and all leaders involved in the process of creating new ventures within large organizations. Contents: 1. Corporate Venturing in Health Care: A Cbusinez Case 2. Corporate Venturing in the Chemical Industry: A Colourful Case 3. BAC BV: The Successful Exit of a Unilever Spin-Out 4. Document Services Valley: A Lifeline for the Printing Industry? 5. Innovation Projects and Venturing at Rabobank: Creating a New Dynamic 6. Eindhoven University of Technology's Innovationlab: Commercializing Scientific Research for Scientific Research Itself 7. Sanomaventures: Innovating by Attracting Entrepreneurial Talent 8. Nrc.Next: Reinventing Printed News 9. Discussion and Conclusions 10. Top 10 Best Practices for Managing Corporate Ventures Index

In The Dynamics of Technical Innovation, Geert Duysters explores the evolution of complex industrial systems over time by examining technological and market developments in the computer, telecommunications and semiconductor industries.An integrated theoretical framework is developed by Professor Duysters to study the relationship between technological change, changing industry structures, and innovation strategies by several different categories of company. This is followed by an in-depth empirical analysis of technological convergence, strategic technology partnering and globalization - three major factors in the development of information technology over the past decade. The Dynamics of Technical Innovation is one of the first attempts to measure quantitatively the technological convergence process in information technology. Providing new insights on the internationalization of research and development, this analysis of recent and historical developments in the information technology industry which will be welcomed by scholars and practitioners interested in international business, technological change and innovation management.