How Innovation Drives Shareholder Value – The Power of Diversification

Jan Sedlacek & Julian Ritter

Co-founder and Partner at Stryber | Associate Partner at Stryber

as recording during on 7 December 2020 as part of Innov8rs Connect on Business Design, Venture Building & Portfolio Management.


Companies seek to maximise shareholder returns. In their study “The power of diversification - How innovation drives shareholder value”, Stryber were able to identify an underused and underestimated way to do so: diversification, i.e. strategically adding new revenue segments.

Diversification captures a company's adaptability in the face of changing customer preferences. The increase in diversification of revenue segments over time can therefore be considered a good measure of innovativeness of a company as it reflects the creation and commercialisation of new business models and products addressing new markets and customer needs.

Stryber analysed levels of revenue diversification measured by the introduction of new revenue segments in the annual reports of 1,838 listed companies in the US and in Europe together with their stock market performance for the 10-year period between 2010 and 2019. In this session, Jan & Julian shared the ins and outs of the power of diversification.

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About the speaker

Jan Sedlacek is Co-founder and partner of Stryber, a strategic corporate venture builder, and empowers leading organisations to venture into new business and drive growth by building innovative corporate venture portfolios. Prior to founding Stryber in 2016, Jan Sedlacek gained experience as a start-up founder, web designer, manager, marketing expert and strategy consultant. He was part of the management team of a travel start-up and transformed a Swiss private bank into the first hybrid bank.

Julian is an Associate Partner at Corporate Venture Builder Stryber. He is a passionate entrepreneur and former strategy consultant. Julian started his career at strategy consulting firm Bain & Company, where he advised clients from the financial services, private equity and other industries. After his time with Bain & Company, Julian founded a hospitality tech startup in 2016, which he grew to over 100 employees across 3 countries. He joined Stryber in June 2020 to lead its expansion into the UK market after Stryber had successfully established itself as the largest independent corporate venture builder in DACH.