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In Italy’s innovation landscape, Venture Building is emerging as a methodology capable of transforming ideas and intellectual property into tangible business ventures. However, the traditional approach, focusing exclusively on universities and research centers, presents structural limitations. Venture Building could gain new momentum by shifting its focus directly to the industry, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
While Italy emphasizes academic technology transfer, companies, especially SMEs, possess extraordinary innovation potential, often confined to their specific sectors. A breakthrough in mechanical engineering, for instance, might have remarkable applications in medical technology or the automotive industry, yet such cross-sector opportunities often remain unexplored.
A compelling approach would involve supporting SMEs in transforming their innovations into independent startups while maintaining strategic involvement from the parent company. Venture Building offers a solution to SMEs' key challenges in diversifying their innovations: lack of specialized expertise, limited resources, and insufficient market knowledge.
This approach blends venture capital with Venture Building methodologies by establishing dedicated teams capable of transforming intellectual property or corporate assets into stand-alone businesses with scalable and sustainable business models. For example, a precision engineering company that has developed an innovative technology could leverage it to create a startup applying the technology in a new sector. This process is facilitated through external partnerships and can include funding rounds from private investors, such as venture capital firms.
What is Corporate Venture Building (CVB)?
Corporate Venture Building is an innovation model that enables established enterprises to create new startups leveraging internal assets, know-how, technologies, or ideas. Unlike incremental innovation, CVB focuses on building new, independent businesses that may operate beyond the company’s core business while benefiting from its strategic support.
Key elements of this approach include:
Leveraging existing assets: patents, infrastructure, data, networks, and human capital.
Establishing independent corporate entities with dedicated governance structures.
Applying startup methodologies: Lean Startup, Customer Development, Agile/Scrum, Growth Hacking, Design Thinking, and OKRs.
Securing external funding while maintaining the parent company as a key shareholder.
CVB thus combines the stability of established enterprises with the entrepreneurial agility needed to explore new market opportunities.
In Italy, CVB is still underutilized and often mistaken for other innovation strategies. While some SMEs have experimented with similar initiatives, they tend to be isolated projects rather than structured processes. In contrast, international examples show that internal Venture Builders succeed when implemented as continuous frameworks featuring:
A broad portfolio of ventures tested in parallel.
A structured validation funnel with clear gates, KPIs, and performance metrics.
A progressive investment logic, where funding is allocated based on market validation insights at each stage.
Italy boasts a wealth of untapped innovation within its SMEs, often rooted in highly specialized expertise. However, this potential remains confined to its original industry, limiting its full realization. By leveraging this hidden strength, Venture Building can become a tangible and long-term competitive advantage for forward-thinking SMEs.
The adoption of Corporate Venture Building within Italian SMEs requires awareness of key obstacles and the implementation of practical solutions. Below is a summary based on real-world experiences:
Lack of strategic focus
Innovation efforts lack a clear vision.
Solution: Define an Innovation Thesis aligned with corporate objectives.
Inadequate governance
New initiatives get stuck in traditional bureaucracy.
Solution: Establish autonomous units or spin-off entities with streamlined processes.
Limited entrepreneurial skills
Internal teams lack startup methodologies knowledge.
Solution: Engage external mentors and establish targeted training programs.
Budget constraints and risk aversion
SMEs struggle to invest in long-term innovation projects.
Solution: Allocate funding progressively based on market validation and seek co-investments from public and private investors.
Risk-averse culture
Failure is perceived negatively.
Solution: Foster an intrapreneurial culture with dedicated incentives and programs.
Corporate Venture Building is not an exclusive privilege of large multinational corporations. It is a scalable, adaptable, and replicable model that can be successfully implemented by Italian SMEs. In a market that rewards foresight and innovation, building new ventures internally can become a game-changing strategy for long-term value creation.
An industry-driven approach could revolutionize how innovation is translated into economic value. With a clear Innovation Thesis, lean governance, the right skillset mix, and openness to external partnerships, even small and medium-sized enterprises can become builders of their own future. The challenge lies in fostering collaborative models between established companies and new entrepreneurs—whether internal or external—to enable knowledge and capital synergies. The market exists, and the opportunities are abundant; we simply need to shift our perspective and unlock the full potential of existing resources.