“Outsourcing” innovation: the most popular form of investment abroad, Venture StudioWhat is it?
Therefore, if an enterprise wants to innovate from within, it is difficult to see satisfactory results unless the leader holds the determination of “doing what he needs to do” and remove the restrictions for the innovation department through sufficient resources; What about outsourcing?
As the market’s demand for innovation continues to escalate, a new model of investment and innovation has become popular abroad in recent years-“Empowered Venture Capital” (Venture Studio). This model can not only find new capital exports for investors, find application scenarios for innovation teams, but also provide a set of low-risk but more comprehensive solutions for the transformation of large enterprises.
Innovation is a big flaw for big companies and a good opportunity for new creation
Silicon Valley entrepreneurship master Steve Blank once pointed out that while the scale of the enterprise is gradually expanding and stabilizing, it will increasingly concentrate resources on the products that have been developed, and will try every means to optimize SOP and improve production efficiency. For large enterprises, this is an effective way to control risks, and it is also the easiest to lose in innovation-when the product cannot keep up with the market, or when there are stronger competitors, even the best SOP is useless.
Therefore, some companies will invest resources in the innovation department of the company, mobilize the “young people” within the group and the “experts” outside the corner group, and strive to develop innovative applications to continue the life of the company. However, some objective restrictions often lead to the incompleteness or unrecognizable innovation projects.
For example, the young Talent inside may lack cross-industry experience and be integrated by corporate culture, which is often not easy to outside the box. The experts invited from the outside must first face the fetters of the existing corporate culture and administrative system. It may take half a year or more just to run in and rebuild.
Therefore, if an enterprise wants to innovate from within, it is difficult to see satisfactory results unless the leader holds the determination of “doing what he needs to die” and remove the restrictions for the innovation department through sufficient resources.
Outsourcing Innovation: The New Engine of Growth
In view of this, Steve Blank pointed out that when large companies face innovation crises, they can actually choose a shortcut: work directly with “innovative teams” (Product Creators).
In 2014, Boston Consulting Group, one of the top three management consulting companies in the world, formed a “team with innovative capabilities”-BCG Digital Ventures. Guided by assisting large companies in their innovative needs in a changing market, they have so far developed more than 50 large companies for new products or established innovative businesses.
This kind of innovation team that develops outside the enterprise is usually composed of a group of experienced entrepreneurs and senior technical experts. Although it is not large-scale, it has cross-industry experience. The focus is that there is no administrative bond between departments. They have creative and unrestrained ideas, and can apply innovative concepts to application scenarios that the group’s senior executives could not imagine, as well as cross-industry integration applications.
To put it simply, compared to reorganizing talents from within large enterprises and developing innovation, the innovation team that has already developed externally can more quickly gain insight into market needs, and create it under the agile thinking of small organizations, low risk and fast iteration. A new business model of “Helping Big Brands Continue to Live” and “Innovating for Big Enterprises”. This way of cooperation between large companies and external innovation teams is a major feature of Venture Studio.
Stand on the shoulders of giants and build unicorns
In addition to Venture Studio, the common modes of cooperation between enterprises and innovation teams are: incubators, accelerators and vertical accelerators. Incubators usually focus on incubation, providing only the field or equipment; while accelerators are designed to invest capital, and the actual connection with new ventures is relatively weak. In recent years, the popular vertical accelerator is the stage to provide new and verified products. However, the overall cooperation density is not very high, and it is only involved in the late stage of product development.
Venture Studio, as an innovative team, has different application scenarios, but its relationship with the enterprise is like the “Master Skin in the game” that investment guru Warren Buffett (Warren Buffett) calls. Venture Studio’s innovation team focuses on the integration of technology and resources. It will work with large enterprises to create mutually beneficial and win-win innovative products or business models.
If the innovation team becomes a unicorn in the future, then the big company that cooperates with it will be one of the unicorn masters. For large enterprises, innovation is outsourced at the beginning, but after in-depth cooperation with the outsourcing team, the results of innovation will be packaged later, and under the new business model operation, they will receive satisfactory remuneration from the blue ocean.
Therefore, the innovation team of large enterprises and Venture Studio will be a mutually beneficial partner, integrating cross-industry experience, technology and resources, and working together to open up new opportunities in future competition. Large companies can use Venture Studio to reduce the administrative and personnel costs of corporate transformation and organizational adjustment, as well as the hidden costs of resisting change, and can quickly obtain the combination of the Group’s existing advantages due to the development of innovative products and the generation of new business models. High market share; the innovation team can obtain financial support from large enterprises, and find more application scenarios from the enterprise’s territory to realize the commercial value of innovative technologies.
Can Venture Studio become a new concept in Taiwan?
Under the Venture Studio model, large enterprises have less cost of transformation, lower risk, and higher competitiveness; the innovation team has enough funds, more scenarios, and gameplay have been upgraded. The result of the two kinds of in-depth cooperation is to quickly gain a place in the market and obtain huge commercial value.
With the continuous application of Venture Studio in various scenarios, this model has generated more and more interest from venture capital and large enterprises. Currently LeadBest Consulting Group continues to operate this model in the case of cooperative industry partners. In the future, it will bring more stable and innovative development to Taiwanese companies. For Taiwanese companies that want to transform their businesses and plug in competitive advantages, Venture Studio It will be a forward-looking way that can create low-risk, high-reward development.