Corporate venture capital and start-up innovation in the digital age

Marius Berger, Sara Calligaris, Andrea Greppi and Dmitri Kirpichev

No 2026/05, OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between corporate venture capital (CVC) investments and start-ups’ innovation activity. Using a dataset of 240 CVC investors from Europe and North America and more than 44 000 start-ups located globally, the analysis shows that CVC investors target technology-intensive start-ups with large patent portfolios, particularly in high-digital-intensity sectors. After the first investment, the innovation intensity of CVC-financed start-ups decreases relative to start-ups financed by other VC investors, particularly when the corporates are from high-digital-intensity sectors. At the same time, CVC-financed start-ups receive more citations on their patents and are more likely to get acquired, even though not by the same corporation making the CVC investment. The study discusses potential explanations for these differences, including the increasing globalisation and digitalisation of entrepreneurial ecosystems, and the role of dominant players in high-digital-intensity sectors.

Keywords: corporate venture capital; entrepreneurial ecosystems; innovation; start-ups (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 G24 L26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1787/43604dfc-en (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:stiaaa:2026/05-en

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().