Björn Mais, Lysander Weiss, Dominik K. Kanbach

• As an emerging form of strategic corporate venturing, equity-free corporate-startup-partnership (“Venture Clienting”) aims to enable open innovation for the strategic renewal of established companies. However, empirical research on how to leverage Venture Clienting for strategic renewal is thin. Consequently, the goal of this study is to provide empirical research on organizational characteristics to maximize strategic value contribution from Venture Clienting. To achieve this goal, the study applies a qualitative case-study analysis of semi-structured interviews from eleven managers of Venture Clienting units and comparable subject matter experts. That way, four aggregate dimensions for strategic Venture Clienting are identified for the resulting framework of guiding principles: autonomous entity, ecosystem prominence, problem orientation, and startup autonomy. This provides empirical grounding for strategic Venture Clienting in corporate venturing theory, and helps practitioners in established corporates to better leverage their equity-free corporate-startups partnerships for strategic renewal.