A Lucent Technologies venture capital spinoff-initially launched to commercialize underused technologies from the company's labs-has secured sole rights from British Telecom and Philips Electronics to do the same job for them that it's doing for Lucent.

An early success made this leap possible. In 2002, the Lucent spinoff, New Ventures Partners of Murray Hill, NJ, sold one of its first companies-Celiant, which took a radio amplification technology out of Lucent's Bell Labs and developed it for next-generation cell-phone networks-for $470 million. And that meant New
Ventures Partners had cash and credibility "to talk to other corporations and say, We'll put up the capital and do this for you too, and in return, we'd just like to have exclusive access to your labs,'" explains managing partner Andrew Garman.