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As companies are increasingly looking for faster innovation cycles and increased collaboration with startups, but don’t always want the risk associated with direct investment, venture clienting has grown massively in popularity in recent years.
Today I talk to Christoph Huning, managing partner at NMA Venture Capital, a consulting firm focused on helping corporates work with startups, and specialising in venture clienting, primarily in the media and marketing sector in Germany.
He talks about his journey from his early days as an innovation consultant in Germany in the late 90s and how digital innovation in the media space has come along since then, how venture clienting’s lower risk profile makes it a more attractive entry point not just for corporates who have tries other open innovation programmes unsuccessfully in the past, but also for smaller corporates for whom CVC’s are not yet possible.
We also touch on how he has noticed a strong shift to venture clienting models relative to accelerator-based ones, which NMA used to run, how important it is to align the procurement department with other BUs within a corporate when venture clienting, as well as how, despite the strong economy in a country like Germany, getting budget allocated to innovation still tends to be difficult and how there is still a sizeable digital gap, even in a country as advanced as Germany, where it’s not unheard of for quite large companies to still be sending faxes.