The Cheap 10%: Where Corporate Ventures Are Actually Decided
Less than 10% of a corporate venture's lifetime capital is spent before the decision to scale — yet that early slice decides whether the rest is well spent or wasted. Almost no one uses it to ask the two questions that matter most: does the idea hold, and does it hold here? A good idea in the wrong host fails the same way a bad one does — it just takes longer, and costs more, to find out.
Less than 10% of a corporate venture's lifetime capital gets spent before the decision to scale.
That early slice isn't the cheap part of the process. It's the part that decides whether the other 90% is well spent or wasted.
And it's the slice almost no one subjects to a hard external read. Workshops, yes. Ideation, yes. A rigorous outside assessment of whether this organization can actually execute what the venture requires — almost never.
So the 90% gets committed on the strength of a hypothesis nobody stress-tested while it was still cheap to be wrong.
The most expensive question in corporate innovation isn't only whether the idea holds. It's whether it holds here — in this organization, with these resources, these processes, these priorities.
A good idea in the wrong host fails the same way a bad idea does. It just takes longer and costs more to find out.
Both questions are answerable in the cheap 10%. Almost no one asks them there.