Corporate Ventures for Strategic Renewal? Start-Up Identity and Strategizing Under Ambiguity.

Many incumbents set up corporate ventures for their strategic renewal. These corporate ventures must enact the incumbent's goals while doing things differently to renew the incumbent's strategy. Often these corporate ventures are confronted with ambiguity caused by multiple goals imposed by the incumbent they are embedded in. To better understand how corporate ventures strategize under ambiguity, we investigate how a corporate venture's identity relates to strategizing under ambiguity arising from multiple goals. We address this question in a longitudinal study of a corporate venture which had to contribute to the incumbent's transformation into a more data-driven, circular and B2C (business-to-consumer) oriented firm. Using a longitudinal, micro-level ethnographic approach allowed us to gain in-depth insights into how corporate ventures strategize under ambiguity. We show how a corporate venture solved ambiguity and engaged in their own strategizing activities instead of following the imposed goals from the incumbent. Driven by their start-up identity which developed over time the corporate venture shifted further and further away from the imposed goals of the incumbent. The corporate venture followed its own strategizing activities and ultimately ended in a strategy drift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]