Circular Transition through Corporate Ventures? Start-up Identity and Strategizing under Ambiguity.

Abstract

This empirical study offers insights into the struggles of new corporate ventures to make circularity goals work in practice. Over a period of five years, we followed a circular business model using ethnographic methods. We show how the corporate venture that was set up to drive circularity and data-drivenness drifts away from these espoused goals. Our study suggests that goal ambiguity creates freedom for corporate ventures to deviate from imposed goals such as circularity. The venture’s identity served as a main driver for the strategy drift.