From Capital to Green Innovation: Corporate Venture Capital as a Vehicle for Sustainable Organizational Learning

ABSTRACT As increasing stakeholder pressure pushes firms to embed sustainability into their strategies, this study explores how corporate venture capital (CVC), a key corporate entrepreneurship instrument, supports corporate parents to learn from sustainable startups. Based on organizational learning theory, we examine the CVC's role in facilitating knowledge transfers across CVC‐startup‐corporate‐triads. Using an inductive approach, we interviewed 38 CVC and 20 startup managers across Europe. We find that sustainability alters the learning process: evolving knowledge, multidirectional flows, and resource mobilization. Structured exchange, enablers, like trust‐building initiatives, and barriers, including intellectual property concerns or not‐invented‐here‐syndromes, shape this process. We synthesize our findings into a dynamic framework and nine CVC typologies based on sustainability orientation and strategic corporate alignment, consolidated into matchmakers and collaborators. Theoretically, we extend organizational learning and CVC literature by emphasizing that sustainability reshapes learning dynamics in kind. Practically, we offer guidance on structuring CVC programs to succeed in sustainability transformation.