A Framework Proposal For Choosing A New Business Implementation Model in Henkel

Henkel's New Business team is a corporate venturing unit that explores corporate entrepreneurial activities on behalf of Henkel Adhesives Technologies. The new business ideas are implemented through one of these models: incubator, venturing or innovation ecosystem. In current practice, there is no systematic framework in place to choose the implementation model. The goal of the thesis is to propose a framework for choosing the most appropriate model for implementation of a new business idea in Henkel. The thesis approaches the topic on practical and theoretical grounds. The first part outlines the related literature and theoretical focus. The literature covers definitions and theories of incubator, corporate venturing, corporate venture capital, innovation ecosystem and investment decision-making process. The practical approach relates to the company case studies of Philips, 3M and BASF. In this thesis, each model is analyzed based on a broad literature review, case studies and personal interviews with experts. The second part is the main discussion and analysis of the topic assembling with practical examples in Henkel. It comes to a recommendation that Henkel should prioritize and choose the most appropriate model for the new business proposal after the "concept scoping" stage, and before detailed investigation. It also proposes a scorecard framework that entails 14 key criteria for choosing the mode: degree of market competition, potential disruptiveness, technological risk, time to market, strategic alignment, degree of customization, dependency of related industries, technological newness of related industries, idea source, protectability of intellectual property, internal expertise, technological competence, commercial competence and parenting advantages. Furthermore, a new business developing strategy matrix is constructed based on two dimensions: strategic importance and operational relatedness. It is to further check the accuracy and validity of the results from the scorecard framework. Finally, it is suggested that future research can be done to improve the framework by adding weightings and scale of each criteria within the framework.