Starting a business inside another is hard; most fail and many of those fail for reasons related to execution. Putting together a launch team is tough and nothing is more likely to lead to failure than trying the team to do it as part of their day job. Use a dedicated and experienced corporate venturing manager to get the business off the ground before you commit to senior hires or hires more suitable for a scale business that is up and running.

I’ve worked in corporate ventures many times; Sony’s mobile phone business, TalkTalk within Carphone Warehouse, Regus’s new ventures team and Trinity Mirror Digital Classifieds which stood outside the main Trinity Mirror corporate.