IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bushst/v46y2004i1p100-122.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corporate venturing: the origins of Unilever's pregnancy test

Author

Listed:
  • Geoffrey Jones
  • Alison Kraft

Abstract

Large established corporations face many challenges to develop and sustain dynamic capabilities in innovation and the creation of new businesses because of constraints arising from technological and resource lock-ins, and routine and cultural rigidities. From the 1960s large corporations became increasingly aware of such problems. Heavy research spending was not translated into successful new business creation. The formation of autonomous entrepreneurial units within large corporations was one response. The origins of Unilever's home pregnancy test, Clearblue, which was launched in 1985, is used as a case study to examine the viability of one version of this strategy. Unilever was able to translate its extensive knowledge base in immunology into a successful branded product in medical diagnostics by creating a separate corporate entity, Unipath, with a distinctive culture, shielded from the mainstream Unilever organisation, yet able to draw on corporate capabilities in marketing, and financial resources. Yet the very distinctiveness of Unipath orphaned it within Unilever, and the business was divested in 2001.

Suggested Citation

  • Geoffrey Jones & Alison Kraft, 2004. "Corporate venturing: the origins of Unilever's pregnancy test," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(1), pages 100-122.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:46:y:2004:i:1:p:100-122
    DOI: 10.1080/00076790412331270139
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00076790412331270139
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00076790412331270139?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Childerhose, Janet E. & MacDonald, Margaret E., 2013. "Health consumption as work: The home pregnancy test as a domesticated health tool," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-8.
    2. Eriksson, Taina, 2014. "Processes, antecedents and outcomes of dynamic capabilities," Scandinavian Journal of Management, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 65-82.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:46:y:2004:i:1:p:100-122. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FBSH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.