Two's company, three's a crowd: The impact of corporate venture capital unit's investment partners on the corporate investor's innovation performance

Abstract

This paper examines how the number, quality, and depth of the relationships, between a corporate venture capital (CVC) unit and the traditional venture capital (VC) that it coinvests with, affect the corporate investor's innovation performance. We find that there is an inverted U‐shaped relationship between the number and the quality of the CVC unit's partners and the corporate investor's innovation performance. The depth of the relationship weakens the diminishing benefits of coinvesting with many partners. Jointly, our findings illustrate the danger of the ‘more is always better’ principle in terms of VC centrality and provide in‐depth insights for corporate investors to organize innovation.