A CxO’s Guide to Winning the Next 5 Years

by Dennis Liu and Philipp Willigmann

From Fortune 1000 boards and CxOs to the Heads of Innovation and CVC efforts at industrial and regulated enterprises, leadership faces a relentless "Ambidexterity Dilemma": the need to optimize today’s core business while simultaneously funding the radical technologies required to survive tomorrow.

For years, well-meaning executives have struggled to benefit from Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) funds, launched isolated innovation labs, and engaged in "startup tourism" without a coherent strategy. These results are not from inept leadership, but rather structural and practical realities of running a core business NOT optimized for disruption. Intent rarely translates into impact, and the scattered approach often produces "pilot purgatory," where innovations die before they ever scale to impact the bottom line.

To compete, the C-Suite must stop treating innovation as a stand-alone effort done in a vacuum and start treating it as a disciplined, multi-tool architecture. Innovation that never fails isn't innovation; it is execution of the known. Boards and CEOs must accept this, or the architecture breaks. Disruption, done properly, cannot be comfortable.

You do not need to do everything at once; you need to match the right tool to the right corporate problem.

When to Use "Venture Clienting" (The Buy Strategy)

The Objective: Rapid operational improvement and low-cost capability access.

The Problem: You have a specific internal pain point, a supply chain bottleneck or data architecture blind spot, but traditional procurement is too slow.

The Tool: Venture Clienting. Instead of equity, you become the early customer via a purchase order to validate technology in a real-world pilot.

• Why it works: It is cost-efficient and high-volume. While CVC is limited by capital, a Venture Client unit can manage hundreds of startups. For example, GlassDollar uses this model to engage with 10x more startups at a cost often 300 times cheaper per engagement than a Series A investment. It "earns the right" to invest later by creating immediate operational value.

• Where it breaks: Traditional procurement often treats pilots like standard vendor engagements, killing velocity. Technical success often dies at scale without an institutional owner to manage the handoff from the pilot to the Business Unit (BU).

When to Use Corporate Venture Capital (The Invest Strategy)

The Objective: Long-term strategic leverage, market position, and intelligence.

The Problem: You have validated a technology and now need to influence its roadmap, secure your supply chain, or make a larger infrastructure bet.

The Tool: Corporate Venture Capital (CVC).

• Why it works: The best CVCs balance financial rigor with strategic integration. However, in 2025, structural independence is the defining differentiator. 51% of CVCs cite speed and efficiency as their primary roadblocks. To solve this, 2 in 3 financial-first CVCs are now moving "off-balance sheet." This structure bypasses the "KPI Trap" where corporate bureaucracy typically blocks 35% of high-potential deals.

• Where it breaks: Traditional "captive" CVCs fail when they lack deal-side independence or fail to utilize modern tools like the secondary market (now used by 22% of CVCs) to manage liquidity and portfolio health during market constraints.

When to Use Venture Building (The Build Strategy)

The Objective: Permanent capability integration when a technology is strategically central but cannot be "rented."

The Problem: A capability is core to your future, but it doesn't exist in the market. You must own it or build it.

The Tool: Acquisition or partner-led venture building.

• Why it works: Innovation must be a formal corporate function, not a project-based side effort. Effective venture building requires a direct CEO Mandate; without personal leadership from the top, internal ventures stall. Successful models tie internal innovation to specific financial KPIs, generating hundreds of millions in new revenue by compensating internal "founders" with milestone bonuses that mimic startup skin-in-the-game.

• Where it breaks: Internal builds fail when employees are asked to act like founders without being resourced or compensated as such. Acquisitions fail when the corporate parent hasn't first learned how to work with the target commercially.

The Execution Gap: Closing with a POC Fund

Understanding these tools is the easy part. Executing them inside a risk-averse enterprise is the actual work. Procurement bottlenecks and BU leaders protecting short-term P&L against long-term scaling are the defining frictions.

To bridge this gap, we recommend a Board-authorized Proof of Concept (POC) Fund. This central fund must have a multi-year runway designed to absorb early-stage risk, ensuring that the cost of innovation does not penalize a BU’s quarterly performance. Accountability must be distributed: the COO owns deployment, the CFO aligns the capital logic, and the Head of Innovation orchestrates the architecture.

Closing

Innovation is no longer about scattering capital and hoping something sticks. The companies that win the next decade will be the ones that deliberately orchestrate Venture Clienting, targeted CVC, and strategic building as one integrated operating capability.

We have sat on every side of these partnerships: as operators, investors, and advisors. We bring that pattern recognition to boards, building this architecture from the ground up. This is the work we do.