Study of The Relationship Between Public and Private Venture Capitalists in France: A Qualitative Approach

TL;DR

This study explores the formal and informal relationships between public and private venture capitalists in France, highlighting hybrid syndication practices and their role in fostering innovation and legitimacy within public-private partnerships.

Contribution

It provides a qualitative, interpretative framework analyzing public-private VC relationships through interviews, emphasizing hybrid syndication and resource exchange in France.

Findings

Public-private VC relationships are formal and informal, forming a network for innovation.

Hybrid syndication enables private VCs to benefit from wealth distribution during innovation.

Public actors seek legitimacy through controlling roles in partnerships.

Abstract

This research focuses on the study of relationships between public and private equity investors in France. In this regard, we need to apprehend the formal or informal nature of interactions that can sometimes take place within traditional innovation networks (Djellal \& Gallouj, 2018). For this, our article mobilizes a public-private partnerships approach (PPPs) and the resource-based view theory. These perspectives emphasize the complementary role of disciplinary and incentive mechanisms as well as the exchange of specific resources as levers for value creation. Moreover, these orientations crossed with the perspective of a hybrid form of co-investment allow us to build a coherent and explanatory framework of the mixed syndication phenomenon. Our methodology is based on a qualitative approach with an interpretative aim, which includes twenty-seven semi-structured interviews. These data were subjected to a thematic content analysis using Nvivo software. The results suggest that the relationships between public and private Venture capitalists (VCs) of a formal or informal nature, more specifically in a syndication context, at a national or regional level, are representative of an ''economico-cognitive'' (Farrugia, 2014, page 6) approach to networking and innovation. Moreover, the phenomenon of mixed syndication reveals a context of hybridization of public and private actors that would allow the private VCs to benefit from the distribution of wealth when the company develops its innovation. We can also identify a process related to a quest for legitimacy on the part of the public actor characterized by its controlling role within the public-private partnership (Beuve and Saussier, 2019). Finally, our study has some limitations. One example is the measurement of the effects of relationships on ''visible'' or ''invisible'' innovation (Djellal \& Gallouj, 2018, page 90).