Innovation isn’t necessarily the first word that comes to mind crossing into the state of Kansas, with its sprawling cornfields. But Scott Ford, general manager of Sprint’s first venture arm, took the plunge anyway and opened shop earlier this month in Overland Park—with an eye to investing in mobile application startups.

The fund, managed by four partners, will invest in up to six early-stage mobile deals, of perhaps $1 million to $3 million each, by year-end. Compared to Sprint’s $34-billion yearly revenues, that’s not a big pile, but Mr. Ford hopes the investment will lead to important innovation.

The mobile work force, commerce, advertising, and entertainment are a few of the areas Mr. Ford says he’s eying, though he probably won’t be alone. Sprint may be new to venture but it’s hardly a pace-setter—Vodafone, Intel, Cisco, and Qualcomm all have investment units patrolling some of the same ground.

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Corporate venture funds have to balance near-term return on investment with longer-term tech innovation, of course. Unlike a pure venture firm, corporate VCs need to both bring innovation into the mother ship and make some money. “We’re going to avoid the key measurements of ROI,” says Mr. Ford. “We’re not just focused on 10X returns.”

If Mr. Ford can do both, he should be in good shape. Gary Dushnitsky, assistant professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s WhartonSchool, says Sprint will have to sort out what kind of startups it’s after. “Are they looking for potential acquisition targets? Or complementing technologies?” Mr. Dushnitsky wonders.

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On top of defining the search, corporate venture firms sometimes struggle with early-stage startups. Young startups with valuable IP worry over how much proprietary information to divulge to the corporate firm, Mr. Dushnitsky wrote in a research note. That could be a problem, and push the promising young companies toward non-corporate partners.

Mr. Ford is pretty quiet on the direction of the new fund. “Our hope is that Sprint’s venture focus will help the local area,” he says. But if ideas don’t start jumping out of the corn fields, he’s prepared to make regular visits to Silicon Valley. “We are very well networked in the Valley,” he says.

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Contact the writer: KFehrenbacher@RedHerring.com