Collaborative Innovation:
Shaping the Future with Corporate Venturing and Startups
Friday, March 22, 2024
The Wharton School, Philadelphia
View speaker bios here
8:30–9:00 a.m. — Breakfast
9:00–9:40 a.m. — Setting the Scene
Welcome & Introduction
How Corporations Engage with Startups: First Results from a Mack Study
Valery Yakubovich, Executive Director, Mack Institute for Innovation Management
9:40–10:40 a.m. — Corporate Venture Capital: Current Trends
This session will look closely at innovations in strategies, organization, and practices of corporate venture capital (CVC), particularly, composition and incentives of CVC teams, resource allocation, and investment decision-making.
Greg Bergamesco, Managing Director, Touchdown Ventures
Stefon Crawford, Partner, GM Ventures
Tereza Nemessanyi, Worldwide Partnerships Lead, Private Equity and Venture Capital, Microsoft
Moderated by Serguei Netessine, Senior Vice-Dean for Innovation, Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, The Wharton School
10:40–11:00 p.m. — Coffee Break
11:00–12:00 p.m. — Beyond CVC: Venture Clienting and Venture Building
In this session, we will discuss latest developments in strategic partnerships between corporations and startups and increasingly common cases of venture building, whereby corporations co-create a startup rather than look for an existing one to meet their specific needs.
David Charpie, Co-CEO, Mach49
Hari Pujar, Operating Partner, Flagship Pioneering
Youssef Kalad, Investor, AlleyCorp
Moderated by Gary Dushnitsky, Senior Fellow, Mack Institute for Innovation Management; Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School
12:00 p.m.–1:15 p.m. — Networking Lunch
1:15 p.m.–3:00 p.m. — Industry Roundtables: Implementing Corporation – Startup Partnerships
Participants will delve into the details of corporate-startup partnerships needed to develop specific technologies. Represented sectors to include: AI; Autonomous, Connected, and Electric Vehicles; Life Sciences and Healthcare; Real Estate; Renewable Energy
3:00 p.m.–3:30 p.m. — Coffee Break
3:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m. — How Corporations Cultivate Entrepreneurial Communities
In addition to relationships with individual startups, corporations cultivate various forms of entrepreneurial communities from incubators and accelerators to ecosystems and platforms. What are the pros and cons of such communities from a corporation’s and startup’s standpoint? How can a company design, implement, and maintain them for the benefit of both sides?
Ankur Jindal, VP & Global Head of Venturing, Technology and Innovation, Tata Communications
Katie Nash, Senior Director, External Affairs, University City Science Center
Laura Plunkett, Executive Director of Startup Engagement and Head of LIFT Labs, Comcast NBCUniversal
Moderated by Valentina Assenova, Edward B. and Shirley R. Shils Endowed Term Assistant Professor of Management, The Wharton School