venture capital fund

If the previous article asked “Why open?”, then this one tackles the more urgent question: “How to open—with discipline, risk control, and real value creation?”

As global corporations accelerate their open innovation programs, it has become evident that most failures do not stem from a lack of ideas but from the absence of governance structures for openness. Leading corporations face the same paradox: to learn fast, they must open up—but opening too quickly without management safeguards leads to chaos.

According to Silicon Valley Bank (2025), up to 51% of Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) funds face challenges in speed and efficiency. Slow decision-making, multilayered approval processes, and a “safety-first” mindset have caused many corporate–startup collaborations to miss opportunities. Open innovation, therefore, doesn’t die from lack of creativity—it dies from being slower than the market.

Corporate Venture Capital: The Financial Lab of Open Innovation

Over the past two years, CVC has returned to the center of corporate innovation strategies—not as a “tech PR tool” as in 2015–2020, but as a disciplined learning capability that delivers both financial returns and access to new technologies and business models.

Instead of pouring money into hundreds of small deals, the new trend is to invest less but deeper. According to CB Insights (2025), the number of CVC transactions has dropped to a seven-year low, but the average deal size has increased significantly. Priority sectors remain AI, clean energy, and biotechnology—pillars shaping global corporate strategies.

A new concept, the secondary market for CVC, has also emerged. About 22% of CVC funds now use this mechanism to create liquidity—selling their startup equity stakes to other investors instead of waiting for IPOs or acquisitions. This allows faster capital recycling, reduced financial pressure, and sustained strategic positioning within innovation networks.

This marks a mature phase of open innovation: corporations are not only open in technology but also open in finance, managing their portfolios like professional investors rather than extended R&D units (SVB, 2025).

However, CVC is effective only when integrated into overall corporate strategy. Many fail because their funds operate in silos, detached from business operations—meaning technologies they invest in never make it into internal value chains. “Open” here means not only investing externally but also reintegrating innovation into the corporate ecosystem.

Venture Client: When Corporations Become the Startup’s First Customer

If CVC is how corporations buy learning rights, then the Venture Client Model is how they buy learning outcomes.

Unlike equity investment, this model doesn’t require corporations to take ownership in startups. Instead, they become the first paying customer, testing and applying startup products in real business environments.

The model originated at BMW Startup Garage, where the German automaker chose to collaborate with startups as pilot suppliers rather than investors. This saved time compared to traditional investment while giving startups true motivation—first revenue is more important than first capital.

According to Qmarkets (2025), Venture Client models are now adopted across industries—from energy (Enel) and finance (BBVA) to pharmaceuticals (Roche). The State of Venture Client Report (2025) notes that 2024 marked a “reassessment phase,” when corporations began cutting symbolic partnerships and restructuring for measurable outcomes.

For Vietnamese corporations, this approach is highly feasible. Becoming a startup’s first customer doesn’t require ownership changes or large venture capital budgets but creates dual value: corporations access new technologies, while startups gain real market validation. This model minimizes financial risk but demands a culture of experimentation—accepting that some pilots may fail, yet each failure is a cheaper lesson than a corporate-scale one.

Corporate Accelerator: When Corporations Become Tech Incubators

While the Venture Client model targets ready-to-market solutions, Corporate Accelerators focus earlier—on nurturing ideas and testing them with internal teams. According to Cognitive Market Research (2025), the global accelerator market is expanding rapidly, with over 2,400 active programs and VC funds. Corporations like Airbus, Shell, and AB InBev use this model to scout emerging technologies, recruit talent, and build long-term links with the startup community.

Interestingly, the effectiveness of accelerators isn’t measured by how many startups succeed, but by how much the corporation learns. A Failory (2025) survey found that only 15–20% of accelerator startups raise follow-on funding, yet nearly 70% of participating corporations reported that they had “restructured their internal innovation processes” afterward.
Ultimately, accelerators don’t just create new startups—they recreate the innovation DNA of the corporation itself.

Opening Ecosystems and Sharing Intellectual Property: From Monopoly to Symbiosis

Today, open innovation is no longer a two-party relationship between corporations and startups—it has evolved into multi-stakeholder networks involving research institutes, customers, suppliers, startups, and regulators co-creating value. Dealroom (2025) calls this the “post-isolation era”, where competition no longer happens between individual companies but between innovation ecosystems.

A prime example is the rise of Patent Pools—shared patent funds contributed by multiple corporations. Companies like Apple, Google, Samsung, and Sony use this model to share core technologies (e.g., 5G standards, data compression protocols), reducing R&D costs and accelerating standardization (PatentPC, 2025). Similarly, cross-licensing allows firms to exchange technology rights without reinvesting from scratch (MontecarloLifestyle, 2025).

For Vietnamese corporations, this is an underexplored yet promising path. Many own uncommercialized patents or hesitate to share due to fears of losing trade secrets. However, with clear IP frameworks and transparent licensing mechanisms, each “sleeping patent” can become either a new revenue source or raw material for others’ innovation.

Open Governance: From Culture to Mechanism

“Disciplined openness” isn’t just about process—it’s about cultural transformation. In successful corporations, open innovation isn’t initiated by R&D departments but embedded in overall strategy. Three foundational elements often define sustainable models:

• Leadership commitment. Without CEO sponsorship, open innovation stops at pilot projects.
• Transparent data and IP governance. Every asset is clearly categorized: core, modular, or open.
• Value-based performance measurement. Instead of counting startup contests, corporations now track conversion rates from pilots to real contracts, time from idea to commercialization, and the revenue or cost savings from open innovation.

According to Coinlaw (2025), the average ROI for CVC portfolios ranges between 20–25%, proving that openness can be both fast and profitable—when managed correctly.

Vietnam: Selective Openness for Faster Learning

In Vietnam, many corporations have begun talking about openness—organizing hackathons, sandbox pilots, and startup collaborations—but most still lack long-term operational frameworks. The next phase should focus not on more activities but on system design: defining goals, IP mechanisms, experimentation budgets, and evaluation criteria.

For startups, understanding how corporations open up is the key to collaboration. A product may not fit CVC investment but could be sold through a venture client model. A technology may not be strong enough for monopoly, yet could be licensed within a patent pool.
Thus, “open” isn’t just corporate behavior—it’s the shared language between two worlds learning to co-evolve faster.

Discipline Is the Foundation of Openness

A successful open innovation program requires not only courage to share but also discipline to manage that sharing. When corporations understand the boundaries between what to keep and what to open, between strategic and collaborative data, innovation stops being a cost—it becomes a profitable capability.

Those who master selective openness today will be the organizations that adapt and thrive tomorrow. In the age of AI and connected platforms, openness is no longer a risk—it is the only insurance against obsolescence.

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References

Cognitive Market Research. (2025). Accelerators market report 2025–2030. Retrieved from

https://www.cognitivemarketresearch.com/accelerators-market-report

CB Insights. (2025). Corporate venture capital trends Q1 2025. Retrieved from

https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/corporate-venture-capital-tre...

Coinlaw. (2025). Venture capital industry statistics 2025. Retrieved from

https://coinlaw.io/venture-capital-industry-statistics/

Dealroom. (2025). Global Tech Ecosystem Index 2025. Retrieved from

https://dealroom.co/uploaded/2025/05/Dealroom-Global-Tech-Ecosystem-Inde...

Failory. (2025). Startup accelerators: Global trends and outcomes. Retrieved from

https://www.failory.com/blog/startup-accelerators

MontecarloLifestyle. (2025). Patent licensing strategies for innovation and monetization. Retrieved from

https://www.montecarlolifestyle.mc/patent-licensing-strategies-for-innov...

PatentPC. (2025). The role of patent pools in Apple’s tech strategy. Retrieved from

https://patentpc.com/blog/the-role-of-patent-pools-in-apples-tech-strate...

Qmarkets. (2025). Venture clienting: How corporations buy innovation. Retrieved from

https://www.qmarkets.net/resources/article/venture-clienting/

Silicon Valley Bank. (2025). State of corporate venture capital report 2025. Retrieved from

https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/state-of-cvc/

State of Venture Client. (2025). The state of venture client report 2025. Retrieved from

https://stateofventureclient.com/state-of-venture-client-report/

Would you like me to continue with Part 3 (the final article) in this series – “Leading Innovation in Corporations: Building Open Capability from Strategy to Culture” – focusing on organizational structure, leadership, and how to establish effective innovation governance?