The Value Captor’s Process

We all know about the high failure rate for new business ventures. This article from the Harvard Business Review explains that the reason for it has to do with how we assess and manage these ventures: that we tend to either take them as-is or leave them. Instead, they say that a range of alternatives could be considered:

• recycling the venture by aiming it at a new target market;
• spinning it off to other owners or a joint venture;
• spinning it into an established business unit;
• salvaging useful elements such as technologies, capabilities, knowledge, and patents.

This article explores this value extraction and the people who practice it: the “value captors”.

They know that a venture should be treated like a scientific experiment, in which learning plays a critical role. They are ready to seize new opportunities if a venture falters on its original course. They foster networks to promote cooperation and collaboration between established business leaders and venture teams and involve people from throughout the company in the venture review process. They don’t allow financial criteria to dominate the reviews, and they recognize that the best people to launch a business may not be the ones who developed the idea. If your innovation pipeline is dry, your promising projects are being strangled for lack of a speedy payback, or someone else has made a fabulous business out of a slightly altered idea that you abandoned, consider the value captor’s path.

Read more: “The Value Captor’s Process: Getting the Most Out of Your New Business Ventures”

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