Corporate Renewal through Internal Venturing and Spin-offs: Perspectives from Organizational Economics

We address the closely related phenomena of corporate venturing and spin-offs in the context of organizational economics, for example, agency perspectives and the evolutionary perspective on firms. These perspectives allow us to say something about both the amount and nature of variety creation inside firms. For example, there are strong arguments that firms will tend to produce too few and too “narrow” venture ideas. Moreover, organizational economics is helpful in deriving propositions about the occurrence of spin-offs, which we separate into “vicious” and “virtuous” ones. The former type refers to ventures that could have helped bringing corporate renewal, but where overruled venture managers left the firm in frustration. The latter type refers to ventures that are too far away from the firm’s core business(es) to assist in corporate renewal, but where their spin-off is tantamount to a learning experience to the firm.