Posted by Updated October 2025
Since 1958, the lifespan of companies on the S&P 500 has plunged from sixty-one years to just eighteen. As Richard N. Foster and Sarah Kaplan show in their book, Creative Destruction, the pace of change demands that leaders abandon legacy systems and rethink how new ventures are built.
A Smarter Way to Grow
A recent EY-Parthenon survey of one thousand executives found that most companies still underinvest in innovation. Even as venture-building budgets nearly doubled between 2022 and 2023, only forty-five percent of leaders were satisfied with $100 million in annual returns. For large-cap firms, EY warns, a billion-dollar benchmark is now the price of staying ahead.
EY Parthenon— Ernst & Young’s strategy arm — outlined five core principles for effective venture building in Harvard Business Review:
Get buy-in. Align decision-makers on clear success criteria and give new ventures real runway.
Keep it separate. Protect emerging ventures from the gravitational pull of the core business while allowing access to shared assets.
Reward quick wins. Fund growth in stages as each milestone proves its worth.
Don’t go it alone. Combine internal strengths with partners and acquisitions that expand capability and reach.
Start small. Test ideas through low-cost, low-risk experiments before making large commitments.
People Power Every Venture
EY’s fifth point—bite-size experiments—depends on people. No model scales without trust, communication, and shared purpose. That’s where teams either connect or collapse.
For four decades, Venture Up has helped organizations turn strategy into human experience—aligning goals through shared challenges, problem-solving, and genuine collaboration.
A Note from the Field
Our relationship with Ernst & Young dates to the 1980s. After a Tucson rock-climbing program in the early 1990s, one Halloween evening revealed something leadership hadn’t noticed: younger staff wished they were home with their kids too. The lesson wasn’t about climbing—it was about awareness. Leadership listened. Culture changed.
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Tags: innovation, team building, venture building, virtual team building
