Sounding Off: IPOs might hamper the spirit of innovation

Reggie Aggarwal, Cvent

"When you're public, you have to make sure you run your operations pretty tight, because you have to predict your business."

Quote from Reggie Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Cvent, in an article on PhocusWire this week on the company's plans to go public.

Each Friday, PhocusWire dissects and debates an industry trend or new development covered by PhocusWire that week.

Going public, whether it's through a traditional IPO or vehicle-of-the-moment in the form of a SPAC, often leads commentators to suggest that it stifles innovation.

Such punditry usually centers on a number of preconceived ideas: that a company will be so wrapped up in the quarterly reporting that it loses focuses; and the pressure to churn out solid performance for its financial backers that it detracts from investing in trying new things.

This is a fair simplistic analysis but it is not entirely without merit.

What may have made a company great, when it was able to throw money at research and development without public oversight, can be a somewhat trickier to quantify when it is forced to do those pesky shareholder roadshows every three months.

And, by virtue of going public, many brands get bigger. A lot bigger, in fact - meaning that the spirit of innovation in a young, smaller company gets gradually ground into corporate dust as the business grows.

This is a fate that has befallen many a travel brand over the years, post-IPO.

But for every company that it took its eye of the innovation ball, there are others that have figured out a way to remain relevant in the ongoing development of new ideas that have an impact on themselves and the wider industry.

Amadeus, for example, often talks up its R&D budget of "hundreds of million of euros" each year, as do the major online travel agencies such as Booking Holdings and Expedia Group, both of which place a large emphasis on test-and-learn protocols with regards to product development.

The balance between the formalities and culture of becoming a public company alongside fostering an ability to try new things is a difficult one.

But it should be a major part of how a company positions itself to its own employees and investors after the bells rings.