You don’t look just for product market fit. You look for product market, corporate fit. 
Corporate Venturing Insider for the last 5 years, has examined stories from across the corporate venturing world. In January 2026, Nicolas sat down with Patricia Kroondijk of Canon Marketing Japan, who shared an uncommon picture of corporate venturing. One where value creation precedes capital, where pilots matter more than pitch decks, and where corporate venture design is as much about organizational alignment as it is about investment strategy.
A Different Entry Point into Corporate Venturing
Kroondijk’s journey into corporate venturing was anything but linear. “I did about 15 years of consulting… mostly in Europe actually,” she explains, rooted in financial services and strategy. Her transition came after a move to Silicon Valley, where “there was no financial headquarters, but there was a lot of tech.” That shift pulled her into innovation and eventually into corporate venturing, where she has now spent a decade working across nearly every pillar of the model.
Those pillars span open innovation, venture capital, venture building, and venture clienting. Early on, she worked in an “open innovation lab… a mix between finding the right use cases for technologies and then also working with corporate customers to apply those use cases.” That foundation, combined with a distinctly Japanese approach to long-term thinking—“look 10, 15 years out, call it, ‘Kizashi’”—shaped her perspective on how corporations should engage with innovation.
Finding Corporate Fit
At the core of Kroondijk’s philosophy is a simple but powerful extension of traditional venture thinking. “You don’t look just for product market fit,” she says. “You look for product market corporate fit.” That third dimension—corporate fit—is what determines whether an idea survives inside a large organization.
“The corporate fit is really the appetite of the corporate that you work for and where they would like to grow into the future,” she explains. And that fit is often less analytical than venture investors might expect. “It can even be personal views of your executives… if that’s the case, just accept it and then move on.”
That advice—move on—reflects a level of maturity that many corporate innovators struggle to reach. Rather than pushing against internal resistance, Kroondijk advocates for alignment over persistence. As Sauvage reframes it, these signals are “a gift… you don’t need to spend any time on [it].” In a corporate setting, knowing what not to pursue can be just as valuable as identifying the next big opportunity.
The Role of Intuition & Insight in CVC
This emphasis on alignment extends into how Kroondijk evaluates ideas and builds conviction. While she acknowledges the role of intuition, she is clear that it must be grounded. “I like to back up the intuition with numbers… the combination of those two intuition and numbers is very, very powerful.” To operationalize this, she relies on structured inputs—“a checklist… news articles… a sentiment of what’s happening”—to triangulate emerging opportunities.
But beyond strategy and fit, execution is where her approach stands out most clearly—particularly in the use of pilots and proofs of concept (POCs).
Pilots & POCs
At Canon Marketing Japan, speed is driven not by internal R&D, but by external collaboration. “Within three months I have something signed and we can actually start trying stuff,” she says, a stark contrast to the “six to 12 months” it previously took to launch pilots. This acceleration is not accidental—it is embedded into the organization’s KPIs. “The number of POCs… is a KPI,” she notes, reinforcing a culture where testing and validation are prioritized over prolonged analysis.
This model flips the traditional venture sequence. Instead of investing first and hoping for value later, Kroondijk’s team often proves value through pilots before committing capital. “We fairly quickly go out… to start to pilot,” she explains. “So we do a little bit… simultaneous… to see what works. So it’s a lot of trial and error.”
That trial-and-error mindset is enabled by a structural advantage: the absence of internal R&D. “We have nothing else,” she says, referring to proprietary technology. “And that’s actually a good thing because the ‘not invented here’… was very common [before].” Without internal biases toward homegrown solutions, the team can move faster, partner more openly, and focus entirely on value creation.
Corporate Venture at Canon Marketing Japan
This philosophy extends into how Canon Marketing Japan has designed its venture function. Unlike many corporations that separate CVC and venture building, Kroondijk’s team integrates both into a single unit. “We’re doing this together as one package to create the new business,” she explains.
The benefits are clear. Insights from investments inform venture creation, while venture building creates opportunities for investment. “You don’t only invest,” she says. “You can also build a venture around [it].” And in cases where startups are essential to execution, the logic becomes even stronger: “Why wouldn’t you… invest? Because the upside is much bigger.”
Managing Workflow With Many Stakeholders
Still, integration introduces complexity—especially when too many stakeholders are involved. Reflecting on past experience, Kroondijk emphasizes the importance of focus. “I don’t want too many business units… at the table at the beginning. I don’t want too many startups at the table too early either. Focus is so important.”
That lesson—start small to move fast—runs counter to the instinct of many corporate initiatives, which often over-index on inclusion and consensus early on. But as she notes, expanding too quickly introduces friction: “The stakeholder management is just so much more massive… all of these questions… get so much more complicated.”
VC-as-a-Service
Another distinctive element of Canon’s approach is its use of VC-as-a-Service (VCaaS). Rather than building a fully internal team from day one, the firm partners with an external VC while remaining the sole LP. For Kroondijk, this model offers a practical starting point—but only if alignment is carefully managed.
“The reputation of the firm is very important,” she says, particularly for accessing high-quality deal flow. But equally critical is how well the partner aligns with corporate priorities. “How will they align with your priorities… how can they find that corporate fit?” These questions, she suggests, should guide any corporation considering a VCaaS approach.
Building Foresight
Ultimately, Kroondijk’s perspective reframes corporate venturing as a design problem rather than a financial one. It is about building systems that enable learning, alignment, and speed—long before capital is deployed.
That mindset is perhaps best captured in her approach to foresight. “Foresight… is projecting yourself… into the future and designing what that new world would look like,” she explains. From there, teams can work backward to identify opportunities and gaps. Combined with insight—“where you think there might be a problem… to solve”—this creates a portfolio-driven view of innovation.
“There’s never one solution to what the future will look like,” she adds. And in that uncertainty lies the real role of corporate venturing: not just to invest, but to explore, test, and build pathways into that future—one pilot at a time.
