PRESS RELEASE:
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–January 28, 2016–
The Corporate Venture & Innovation Initiative (CVI²) announced today the release of the Thelander- CVI² 2015 Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) Compensation Report. The third annual report examines data from more than 150 CVC programs at Global 2000 corporations with cross-industry benchmarks for CVC compensation levels and structures.
CVI² reports that there are more than 1,200 corporations worldwide with CVC programs, more than half of which were formed since 2010. CVI² is an organization of specialized corporate venturing and innovation service providers including DLA Piper, Bell Mason Group, Silicon Valley Bank, Global Corporate Venturing, JThelander Consulting, and Deloitte LLP.
Companies are using CVC as a compelling way to drive outside-in innovation for access to new and disruptive technologies, the development of new business models and participation in emerging markets, all of which may provide meaningful contributions to corporate growth.
“CVCs are greatly impacting global corporations through their corporate innovation initiatives and by accelerating their exposure to new technologies and business models,” said Mark Radcliffe, partner at DLA Piper, and co-founder of the CVI² alliance. “CVC is a critical part of corporate innovation initiatives including M&A, partnerships with other corporations to develop new products and services, leveraging corporate intellectual property and collaborations through open development models (e.g., OpenStack Foundation, Linux Foundation and Eclipse Foundation).This critical role for CVC creates the need for an increasingly unique set of skills and experiences for the professionals who are tasked with creating and executing these strategies.”
The report, along with a 2016 CVC Bonus Survey, was released at the Global Corporate Venturing & Innovation Summit, taking place this week in Sonoma, California.
“This critical third year of CVC compensation and bonus data collection shows that more established standards are emerging for CVC roles and rewards – standards that will deeply affect competitive recruitment and retention of CVC teams,” said Heidi Mason, managing partner, Bell Mason Group and co-founder of the CVI² alliance.
“The data culminating in our compensation report demands that corporations must now take a broader approach, in order to understand relative CVC, VC/PE, and private company executive teams, as well as their compensation and career paths,” said Jody Thelander, founder of JThelander Consulting. “We believe we are the only firm that has consistently gathered, integrated and now normalized ecosystem-wide investment professional compensation data.”
The Thelander- CVI² 2015 CVC Compensation Report notes that as CVC has become a more mainstream strategic innovation activity, a broader range of mandates are aimed at maximizing impact. CVCs are playing an increasingly important role in assisting startups with commercialization, providing their portfolio companies with operational and market development support as well as financing. The annual reports have systematically examined the fast-changing landscape, evolving trends and unique needs of executive management and CVC investment professionals – and created first of kind benchmarks for competing for talent and team retention in the corporate venture capital world.
The latest trends found in the report include:
- CVC jobs (vs. titles) are now standardizing, legitimizing industry-wide CVC career-path development.
- Increasingly, senior-level CVC specialization and investment professional placement is required to ensure CVC program performance and strategic corporate innovation impact.
- High-performance CVC teams now source up to 50 percent of their teams from outside their parent companies.
- The external talent pool from which corporations must increasingly compete now extends across the professional innovation investment ecosystem, including other CVC, VC, PE, and private company professionals. This creates industry-wide urgency for comparative and normalized compensation structures and job bands across these various segments.
- Senior CVC investment professional compensation packages in the top quartile continue to increase, with a number of CVC unit leaders and managing director-level investment professionals reaching the $1M+ range.
The survey found that corporate venture capital unit leaders earn, on average, $315,856 a year, plus $160,552 in cash bonuses. Additional bonus programs are fast becoming the key to recruitment and retention.
The survey also includes minimum, maximum and average data for the unit leader position as well as the following roles: senior investment professional, portfolio manager/CVC unit CFO, investment/program manager, analyst/associate and vice president of Innovation. The increasing variety of roles suggests that CVC compensation approaches will need to continue to evolve to keep up with the expansion of mandates and individual CVC professional responsibilities.
For a full copy of the Thelander-CVI² 2015 CVC Compensation Report, and the Private Company and/or Investment Firm Compensation Reports, visit http://jthelander.com/thelander-surveys/.
The survey was conducted by compensation specialists J. Thelander Consulting (JTC) in partnership with the Corporate Venture & Innovation Initiative (CVI²), a consortium of thought-leading advisory service firms dedicated to serving the corporate venturing and innovation industry. This survey was supported by trade associations NCVA, EVCA, IBF Conferences and Corporate Innovator’s Huddle.
• CVI² is an organization of specialized corporate venturing and innovation service providers and includes charter members CVI² Charter Members are Bell Mason Group, DLA Piper, Silicon Valley Bank, Global Corporate Venturing, J Thelander Consulting, Deloitte LLP and Doblin, a unit of Deloitte. www.CVI2.net
• J.Thelander Consulting is the leading compensation consulting and data collection firm which specializes in privately held companies, investment firms and corporate venture units. www.jthelander.com
About DLA Piper (www.dlapiper.com)
DLA Piper is a market leader in emerging growth and venture capital, with lawyers around the world who specifically serve entrepreneurs, technology companies and venture funds (both institutional and corporate). With offices in more than 30 countries throughout Africa, the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East, DLA Piper is strategically positioned to effectively represent both (1) venture capital clients investing domestically and abroad and (2) a wide gamut of innovative technology companies at all stages of their lifecycle. In certain jurisdictions, this information may be considered attorney advertising.
About Bell Mason Group (www.bellmasongroup.com)
For more than 20 years, Bell Mason Group (BMG) has been an acknowledged CV&I thought leader in guiding Global 1000 clients to customized high performance program development and performance, based on codified best practices in operations, structures, governance, investment and portfolio strategy and performance management. BMG is an expert in helping CV&I teams overcome ‘corporate antibodies’, and streamline operations within the parent company with its road-tested techniques and business processes, designed to maximize and accelerate strategic and financial performance, while marginalizing corporate risk and exposure.
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DLA Piper
Josh Epstein, Media Relations, 212.776.3838