Creating New Ventures from Bell Labs Technologies

OVERVIEW: Interest grows in the use of corporate venture capital as a way of unlocking the hidden potential of technologies which lie inside private central research labs and do not fit with established businesses. The experience of the New Ventures Group within Lucent Technologies illustrates both the challenges and the opportunities of using venture capital for these purposes. The challenge is to balance the forces of the venture capital model with those of an internal corporate development model. The New Ventures Group's experience to date suggests that balancing these forces is difficult but that there are rewards to the organization for doing so. These include the discovery of new sources of growth, the ability to leverage internal technology across multiple businesses, and the ability to stimulate cultural change within the organization.