ARTICLE SUMMARY:
As part of its effort to enhance its focus on innovation and clinical impact, scope giant Olympus has launched a new corporate venture fund, Olympus Innovation Ventures.
For Olympus Corp., formalizing Olympus Innovation Ventures (OIV), its new corporate venture fund, is a logical outgrowth of a more concerted strategy the company launched a couple of years ago to evolve from a low- or mid-tech scope company into one more deeply engaged in advancing the clinical or therapeutic impact of its technology. Townsend Goddard, global head of business development for Olympus, talks of what he calls Olympus’ transformation. “Our ambition is to be a leading global medtech company, and to get there, we felt it was important to be more creative about how we source innovation,” he says, an initiative that includes making more equity investments in promising medtech start-ups. And, he continues, “The best way to do that is to professionalize that activity, be more systematic about it, and have a commitment from Olympus to the venture community,” all part of what he calls “a continuum of tools that we use in business development.”
