Corporate venture capitalists as entrepreneurial knowledge accelerators in global innovation ecosystems

Corporate venture capitalists (CVCs) support innovation with capital and expertise, fueling global ecosystems that are based on knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship (KIE). This research, focusing on the most active CVCs from August 2019 to January 2020, analyzes their contribution to innovation ecoflows regionally and internationally and examines their impact on KIE contexts through an ordinary least squares (OLS) investigation of their entrepreneurial effort, in potential connection with operational intensity and leadership intensity, per round and overall. These investments have increased in the last ten years with a moderate positive correlation between leadership intensity and entrepreneurial effort and a strong positive correlation between operational intensity and entrepreneurial effort (particularly in early stages). Although through different behaviors, CVCs operate for the growth of innovative firms, and their contribution in supporting innovation regionally (above all in California) and internationally is considerable.