Corporate Venturing: The Case Study of Xerox Technology Ventures

Definitions of entrepreneurship almost always involve the risk taking within the business world. Businessdictionary.com states “The capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit.” Why we want individuals to create new companies or even to grow products and ideas within an existing company is beyond the scope of this paper be we are going to assume that over all the outcome of this behavior is good for the organization, community, or country. There is little dispute that the United States was known for this behavior over the last two hundred years and it may be something that we are starting to lose. At least it is a behavior that we want to continue to foster.

| - Lecture: “Managing Innovation and Fostering Corporate Entrepreneurship”- Presentation and Annual Report discussion follow up- Download CompXM Guide from website for discussion Tuesday 11/13.

Discuss the roles of early adopters and network developments in the market acceptance process of innovation

The corporate strategy of the business diversification is to create a synergy to achieve more performance under a single umbrella rather than diverse business units (SNU, 2016). A business diversification is to build the company shareholder value when the independent business units can perform under a single corporation as an umbrella organization instead of independent parents or a corporation. A diversified organization has many business units and each business units have its own business level strategy irrespective of whether they are related or not. A successful business diversification not only spreads the business risk across the diverse units but also adds a long term economic value to the company. The strategy for starting a new business is based on industry attractiveness test, the cost of entry and the better off test (Thompson, Peteraf, Gamble, and Strickland, 2016).

This course for juniors and seniors explores firm strategies related to innovation and technological change. We focus on how the success of technological innovations—new products, processes, and services—depends on the firm’s business model. Other key topics include intellectual property rights and the management of technological uncertainty through organizational arrangements such as corporate venturing, spinoffs, and alliances.

Prior to April 1994, there were several challenges to meet. The company needed to research if it could keep its traditional competitive advantage with print economies of scale (it was found that they could). “Costs were higher than expected: the presses were expensive, required skilled and dedicated operators, and used more toner than anticipated.” Finally, there were issues with selling the idea of digital print medium to internal divisions. “Internally, people thought digital was a good idea but no one wanted it because it was outside their core business. They all had some potential digital work, but didn’t know enough about the markets and were scared of an unproven technology. Customers, on the other hand, almost jumped up and down, even though they too didn’t know what to do with the new technology, or were themselves just starting to convert to digital format.” In other words, there were challenges moving the leadership from the old business model thinking into the new tech future. The basic task was to find out if the new model could work and still keep the competitive advantage and then sell the divisional leadership on adopting the new technology and the new business model.

Xerox hopes to avoid mistakes of the past by having “a system to prevent technology from leaking out of the company”, according to Robert V. Adams, president of XTV. They have a $30 million dollar fund to support this intrapreneurial activity. It has supported a dozen start-ups thus far, only two having failed. These are extremely promising numbers, with 83% of ventures coming to fruition.

Collins, J.C. & Porras, J.I., 1995, ‘Building a visionary company’, California Management Review, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 80-100.

We live in a world where, because of the Internet and the Web, we can communicate with someone in Africa or Asia as easily as we can communicate with someone in the office next door. A company like Xerox represents businesses all over the world, and the diversity of its employees is a big plus. Acknowledging our differences and

Xerox is an American corporation having its headquarters currently in Norwalk Connecticut. The headquarters of the company moved from

It was soon apparent that there was not much profit in just selling computers, so Cohn undertook to tram Pam and himself in the installation and service of NovellTm computer networks. This broadened the base of the business considerably, In order to further use his resources, Colin became the local Xerox distributor and EduComp became the sales agent.

Entrepreneuring: efforts to bring about new economic, social, institutional, and cultural environments through the actions of an individual or group of individuals → emancipatory process with broad change potential. This view foregrounds three aspects: (1) seeking autonomy, (2) authoring, and (3) making declarations.

Financial Research – The Xerox and to make the current profit targets meet with Wall Street's expectations. In addition, Xerox specifically adopted the measures of "return on equity" and "profits standardized" to

Major advantage with this option is the fact that Xerox operates in the market it fully knows, dominates and controls. As a market leader, having gained clear edge over main competitor IBM, Xerox can consolidate its position with the introduction of innovative new product "Book-In-Time solution" that could significantly reduce the publishing costs.

In addition, Xerox has established several joint ventures with other companies in other regions in gaining the market shares in the region. For the access to Europe, Africa and Middle East – Xerox has made a joint venture with Rank Organization PLC, thus, forming Rank Xerox Limited and now the company is under Xerox’s full control since 1997. For the access to Japan and Asia, Xerox has made a partnership with the local firm and established Fuji Xerox (still maintained the joint venture until now). At the same time, separate arrangements were made with the South and Central American countries. In addition, Xerox India (formerly Modi Xerox), is the joint venture company derived with Dr. Bhupenda Kumar Modi in 1983 (Xerox has obtained a majority stake in 1999).