Innovation hasn’t gotten any easier in recent years. Both corporations and universities often find themselves stuck in their attempts to turn compelling problems of interest to their organizations into viable companies.

It’s not that these organizations don’t want to innovate. They do.

Brandpie’s latest CEO Purpose Report from 2023 proves it. The top business goal for chief executives worldwide in the foreseeable future was developing new business models.

So, if it’s not a lack of motivation or aspirations from business and school leadership that prevents their corporations and universities from building entirely new, transformative companies, what is, exactly?

It’s this question that was the impetus behind the creation of High Alpha Innovation's Venture-Building Roundtable, which takes place at our annual Alloy summit.

What organizational leaders can expect to learn at our Venture-Building Roundtable

The reasons for building offshoot businesses vary across organizations.

However, the framework for doing so — whether you’re an established enterprise or leading research university — is the same for all large organizations looking to create startups: 

• Ensure there is clear, strategic rationale for external venture building, with buy-in at the senior level (for corporations, the C-suite and board; for universities, from the administration).

• Implement a rigorous, problem-first, assumption-driven ideation and testing process, with forcing functions put in place to ensure on-pace progress toward key milestones.

• Validate, de-risk, and advance business concepts that you and your venture-building partner (more on that shortly) agree have the highest chances of success and scalability.

• Hire a killer founding team with subject-matter expertise and strong business experience tied to your chosen company, and create a venture capital-backable deal/cap table structure.

Each venture-building phase is nuanced. But, at a high level, this really covers what new-startup development and launching involves today.

The one factor mentioned above briefly that is critical to your venture-building success is the need to work with a highly committed and collaborative outside partner with a lot of experience with helping organizations like yours create new companies at scale.

(Potentially even through the creation of a venture studio.)

And that’s a big component of our Venture-Building Roundtable, during which you’ll learn about:

Failure modes within corporations and universities (and how to overcome them)

Innovation initiatives centered around venture building can fail because:

• Startup creation doesn't align with the business strategy/school mission.

• Executives and administrators don’t see the value of venture creation and, in turn, neglect to offer the desired level of support for related programs.

• Corporate and university leaders have a “leave-no-idea-behind” mentality.

At our Venture-Building Roundtable, we cover these failure modes, among others, and explain how a mindset shift among all stakeholders involved in startup development at your organization is the first step to creating entirely new companies that address big challenges and attract outside capital investment.

Generating (and narrowing down) a list of strong candidates for new companies

Startup ideation must begin with a problem, not a solution.

Taking into account the unmet needs of and obstacles facing a given audience enables your corporation or university to approach these issues from their vantage point.

The good news is most organizations looking to build new companies have no shortage of ideas.

The real challenge comes with whittling that list of strong ideas down to the two or three deemed most likely to thrive from a financial perspective and help the target customers or users in a meaningful, positive way.

Our Roundtable teaches existing and aspiring startup builders how to generate, test, and narrow down business concepts through product-market fit analysis, customer interviews, and other assessment techniques.

By adopting this approach, they can quickly and efficiently move finalist ideas into a “sprint” phase and, eventually, declare a winner to move forward with.

Managing tension and creating ‘Day-Zero’ advantage with your venture building

Having many stakeholders in your venture-building process doesn’t automatically complicate your startup creation efforts.

But there’s almost always going to be some form of tension that arises when creating companies outside the core business.

Knowing how to answer questions from and address concerns of corporate and university leaders who approve and back your venture-building process can ensure you resolve their issues and keep your efforts on schedule — an underestimated element of successful startup creation today.

Our team has decades of experience helping corporations and universities build new companies from scratch and launch them into market.

The best practices we share at Roundtable cover how innovation leaders at corporations and universities can appease key stakeholders and avoid roadblocks that can derail their venture-building initiatives.

How to launch companies that solve big problems with our venture-building playbook

Abiding by the foundational principles and techniques mentioned here is just the beginning of your venture-building journey.

By attending our Roundtable, you can get helpful insights into all aspects of venture creation that you can take back to your business or school and use to determine the next steps to unlock growth and transformation.

With the insights shared in our in-depth workshop, along with the breakout sessions and networking opportunities that come along with it, you greatly improve your odds of launching long-lasting companies in a scalable and repeatable way.

More specifically, companies that have an outsize impact on society and lead to strong returns for you and your investors.