The Corporate Venturer: Diplomat, Therapist, Magician
Patricia Kroondijk, Head of CVC and Venture Building at Canon, on the three roles a corporate venturer has to play.
With Patricia Kroondijk
From The Corporate Venturing Podcast, brought to you by Open Road Ventures
4 things this conversation gets into
- 01The diplomat: navigating power and getting buy-in
- 02The therapist: helping the organisation unlearn
- 03The magician: creating value nobody thought possible
- 04Why pushing too fast triggers the antibodies
Patricia Kroondijk is Head of Corporate Venture Capital and Venture Building at Canon. She drives innovation inside a company known for excellence and legacy, and shares her personal framework of the roles every corporate venturer must master.
Davide Ritorto is a management engineer from Italy with an international MBA, currently working at Lamborghini. He is what some call an intrapreneur, passionate about open innovation and corporate venturing, and driven by curiosity about how things work and how to make them work even better. Through Open Road Ventures he sets out to inspire and inform other innovators, intrapreneurs and dreamers.
He founded Open Road Ventures as a weekly publication on open innovation and corporate venturing, and The Corporate Venturing Podcast grew out of it. He also mentors startups at Motor Valley Accelerator and sits on the Open Innovation Advisory Board at UC Berkeley Haas.
The Corporate Venturing Podcast is made by Open Road Ventures. The Bundl Venture Club is a partner of the show.
Read the full show notes
🎙️ Welcome to a new episode of The Corporate Venturing Podcast!
What does it take to lead Corporate Venturing in a global organisation, when the rules are shifting, and the real challenge is not building ventures… but making them stick?
In this episode, I sit down with Patricia Kroondijk, Head of Corporate Venture Capital and Venture Building at Canon, to explore what it means to drive innovation inside a company known for excellence and legacy, but hungry for transformation.
Patricia shares her personal framework of the three roles every corporate venturer must master:
🎩 The Diplomat — navigating power structures and getting buy-in
🧠 The Therapist — helping the organisation unlearn old habits
🪄 The Magician — creating value where no one thought it was possible
+ Of course, The Entrepreneur (quite obvious)
We also discuss:
🧭 Why venturing is ultimately a cultural transformation tool
⚖️ The power dynamics between core business and new ventures
🚫 Why pushing too fast can trigger antibodies — and how to pace the journey
🌐 How her team thinks globally but executes in alignment with local units
🧱 The invisible work behind aligning stakeholders before a venture even launches
Whether you’re building a venture unit, managing a CVC fund, or trying to bring real innovation into a complex organisation, this episode is a masterclass in the nuance, realism, and persistence it takes to make it work.
Resources:
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