Learning in and of corporate venture capital organizations in Germany: industry structure, companies' strategies, organizational learning capabilities

Based on responses from 20 corporate venture capital organizations (CVCs) in Germany, we examine the goals, degree of autonomy, fund structure, and main investment criteria underlying the venture strategies of CVCs in Germany today as well as how the CVCs have performed strategically and financially. Further we focus on what CVCs did learn based on their experience and which strategic approach to corporate venture capital is most likely to lead to high performance. The main findings are that an organization’s deal experience tends to influence the selection of strategic as opposed to financial goals and affects CVC performance. Individual experience has partly an additional effect on CVC performance. CVCs pursuing an approach that emphasized financial more than strategic goals have more experience at transacting deals and are financially – and sometimes strategically – more successful than CVCs that focus mainly on strategic goals. These results support conclusions drawn by Siegel, Siegel, and MacMillan (1988) and thereby challenge the findings that Gompers and Lerner (1998) reported for the German market in question. We discuss the limitations and contributions of our findings and provide directions for future research.