The IBF Corporate Venturing and Innovation Partnering “Pre-Conference Workshop on Monday, February 6, 2012 aims to provide a framework and context to highlight the best practices and pit falls organizations can face in CV arena. In a few hours participants will gain the benefit of years of experience of practitioners and partners.

The scope will cover:

• Strategic business justification for venturing
• What processes are effectively used
• The teams and governance structures
• Working with partners inside and outside the core business
• Approaches to measuring the financial and strategic benefits

There will be lessons learned from a recently launched corporate venturing group and cases illustrated from many sectors and investment approaches. Attendees will have an opportunity to meet and continue the learning in the discussion with experienced executives who will be participants at the conference.

A key element of the workshop will be the opportunity to pose your questions and challenges in a pre-conference questionnaire and discuss topics in small facilitated roundtable groups.

We would recommend the workshop to executives who are relatively new to corporate venturing and are developing their venturing and partnering approach.

• Investment strategy, sourcing and deal management
• Managing the parent, leveraging corporate assets
• Investment management, tracking venture KPIs
• Measuring success: setting and quantifying strategic metrics

Proposed topics, which will be updated from a participant questionnaire, include:

• Determining the strategic scope and investment areas
• Building and managing a venture team
• Managing the portfolio for financial and strategic benefit

Keynote Presentation & Advanced Screening of “Something Ventured”

About The Film: “Something Ventured”
Apple. Intel. Genentech. Atari. Google. Cisco. Stratospheric successes with high stakes all around. Behind some of the world's most revolutionary companies are a handful of men who (through timing, foresight, a keen ability to size up other people, and a lot of luck) saw opportunity where others did not: these are the original venture capitalists. All were backing and building companies before the term 'venture capital' had been coined: companies that led to the birth of biotechnology and the spectacular growth in microprocessors, personal computers and the web. SOMETHING VENTURED uncovers the ups and downs of the building of some of the greatest companies of the twentieth century, and the hidden dramas behind some of the most famous names in business.

Three corporate innovation executives will each deliver back-to-back, in-depth presentations on best practices to initiate, align, and nurture corporate innovation.

• Advantages
• Truths & realities
• Considerations in choosing a partner

There are numerous examples of corporate incubators that have failed to meet expectations for the sponsoring company and the startup venture. What are the characteristics that have led to these failures? What model can we deploy today that successfully builds new startups and meets corporate venture and partnering objectives? John McIntyre is the Managing Director of the Citrix Startup Accelerator which is extending Citrix Labs R&D capability through innovation venture funding and partnering. John will outline the Citrix program objectives in support of its corporate strategic goals and highlight several of the portfolio companies.

If innovation is defined as a change that creates and adds value, and provides a competitive advantage here and now, where does innovation grow and thrive? Melinda Richter will share how she has worked to create these places that put forth a new model of innovation, providing big company, capital-efficient infrastructures for early stage companies and making success faster, cheaper and easier. By providing the expertise, tools, networks and infrastructure, this new model of innovation has helped push innovation forward into the marketplace, deliver economic wealth and deepen overall industry impact. Showcasing a case study on her collaborative work with Johnson & Johnson's recently opened Janssen Labs, Richter will also share examples of her successes with San Jose BioCenter-named a top incubator by CNN, honored by the National Business Incubation Association's 2009 Incubator of the Year Award and winner of a Harvard's Bright Ideas Award-and the Environmental Business Cluster-one of the first cleantech incubators established in the U.S. and ranked as a top incubator by Forbes.com, Inc.com, Popular Science and CNN. Richter will also highlight how diverse examples of successful public and private sector partnerships, including those with government agencies, global corporations and academic foundations, that are crucial for innovation to thrive

Exceptional companies build bridges between their corporate strategies and their innovation regimes. This alignment allows companies to remain ahead of the competition and drive strong breakaway growth. Today’s leading executives understand that innovation is more than just new technologies or products, rather spanning across all the ways business is conducted.  Prioritizing those innovation resources has become one of the most important decisions a company can make, yet few executives have a complete view to successfully do so.

To address this need, Clareo Partners will host a panel session sharing first hand experiences and insights on how companies grow through innovation. Dr. Robert C. Wolcott, drawing on his experience at the KIN, advising companies and his book, will kick off the panel with a talk on this innovation challenge.

The panel will explore the importance of linking strategy and innovation and the role corporate venture has in staying ahead of emerging opportunities and threats, especially those that come from the start-up world. Panelists will provide insights into building a transformative growth strategy that focuses on innovation and how, in that context, corporate venture provides a powerful tool in scouting out solutions and capabilities they may not otherwise see until it can be too late.

It used to be that discovering new sources of innovation was a painstaking, investigative quest from dusty college laboratories to swanky Sand Hill Road lunch spots. The game has changed. Today’s innovation sourcing executive is more hunted than hunter. Ideas are flowing in from a myriad of sources and the emerging challenge is how to filter the noise to find the true gems that will drive business value. Serial software entrepreneur and EVP of Cleantech Group, Greg Neichin, will discuss digital tools of the trade for the modern innovation sourcing practitioner.

Keynote Presentation:
Google: Managing A Culture of Innovation

Todd Rowe
Managing Director - Global Channel Sales
Google

Spotlight Presentation:
Trends in Technology and Social Media

Presentation by:
Howard Tullman
CEO
Tribeca Flashpoint Academy

Morning Networking & Refreshment Break

Over the last few years, corporations have played a growing role in the venture capital and startup worlds. More corporations have venturing organizations, and these corporations are taking on larger roles - taking board seats, leading deals. But it's not only about dollars and deals for these corporations. Some corporate venturing activities invest little or no money. This panel will explore the variety of ways corporations invest in startups beyond cash.

An Empirical Framework for Screening, Selecting & Measuring Strategic Investments
For years, corporate venture capital professionals have debated whether CVC programs should focus on generating financial returns, on one hand, or achieving strategic goals on the other. The discussion is based on the assumption that there is an inevitable trade-off between the two. This dichotomy is outdated.

In a first for the IBF Corporate Venturing and Innovation Partnering Conference, Synchrony Venture Management will present a white paper on the topic of establishing a framework for targeting strategic investments and succinctly measuring their contribution to enterprise goals. During this eponymous presentation, Adam Caper, Synchrony's Managing Director, and Iain Cooper, the head of Schlumberger's Early Phase Technology Initiative (CVC) group, will describe Synchrony’s methodology – Innovation Capitalism –publicly for the first time.

• Selecting the highest value gaps and opportunities to address through investments and partnerships with early-stage firms
• Normalizing disparate non-financial value-drivers for inclusion in a generalized, empirically-based analytic model
• Tracking the performance of partnerships with early-stage investees over time
• Succinctly articulating both the financial and “intangible” contributions of individual CVC investments and the overall portfolio to corporate goals

Doug Donzelli
CEO
Apprion

Justin Moore
CEO
Axcient

Eric Olden
CEO
Symplified

Moderator:
Pete Bodine
Managing Director
Allegis Capital

Facilitated by a skilled innovation expert, time is reserved for attendees to digest and process the information shared at this year's conference at their tables.