Thirty years of systematic study of internal corporate venturing has revealed that many major corporations experience a strange cyclicality in their ICV activity. (See “About the Research.”) Periods of intense ICV activity are followed by periods when such programs are shut down, only to be followed by new ICV initiatives a few years later. Like seasons, internal corporate venturing programs begin and end in a seemingly endless cycle.

Consider Lucent Technologies’ New Ventures Group, which was set up to reap commercial value from Bell Labs technology. In January 2000, the group was acclaimed as exemplifying best practice for a new-ventures division.1 Yet Lucent, in the aftermath of the telecom downturn, in 2002 sold 80% of its interest in the New Ventures Group to Coller Capital, a British private-capital management company.

Other ICV programs have substantially changed their character or mission. In its first three years of existence, Baxter International Inc.’s nontraditional-innovation program, for example, transformed its mission from the pursuit of new technologies in new markets to the exploration of business opportunities closer to the core business.2 (A new CEO has recently revived a broader search for new growth areas.) A few years ago, Shell GameChanger, the radical innovation program at Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies, might have solicited ideas ranging from carpooling to waste reclamation to sandwich sales to urbanites. However, in today’s innovation climate, such ideas are too radical.3

Xerox Corp. offers still another example. After ad hoc efforts to manage its technology ventures, Xerox established an innovation board in the 1980s to aid decision making. The administrative board soon gave way in 1989 to an internal venture-capital group called Xerox Technology Ventures, to invest in Xerox technologies that showed market potential but were outside Xerox’s core business interests. XTV was terminated in the mid-1990s, and yet another structure, called Xerox New Enterprise, became its replacement. XNE took more aggressive ownership of the ventures yet sought to infuse them with entrepreneurship. XNE, in turn, was terminated in the late 1990s.4

These examples should not come as a surprise. Earlier research found that in many companies, ICV programs manifest significant cyclicality.5 Chesbrough describes the ICV cycle as follows: “The general pattern is a cycle that starts with enthusiasm, continues into implementation, then encounters significant difficulties, and ends with eventual termination of the initiative. Yet within a few years, another