Silicon Valley Start-ups and Corporate Innovation Approaches to Resolve the Innovator’s Dilemma

Bernhard Gold answers the question of how larger firms can learn from the successes of Silicon Valley start-ups by means of corporate venturing and by developing the ‘Spin-Along Approach’ – a method that combines the innovativeness of start-up companies with the capabilities of large corporations to obtain the best of both worlds. Moreover, the author provides an in-depth analysis of the Silicon Valley ecosystem and presents new corporate innovation methods for the digital age, with the aim of providing a final resolution to the ‘Innovator’s Dilemma’.

Bernhard Gold lives and works as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley (San Francisco). Over the last ten years, he has invested in many Silicon Valley companies and thus has intimate knowledge of the intersection between start-ups and the corporate world. Gold completed this dissertation project at the Munich School of Management of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU).