Page 117 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

104 grow from within

to replicate. Nonetheless, other companies have had success
using the Enabler Model. Boeing, for example, has found that
dedicated funds for innovation combined with clear, disciplined
processes for allocating those funds can go a long way toward
unlocking latent entrepreneurial potential. Well-designed
Enabler practices also have the side benefit of exposing senior
management to ambitious, innovative employees, allowing the
company to identify and nurture future growth leaders.
Whirlpool is an interesting and unusual case, in that it began
its corporate entrepreneurship journey from a baseline that was
considered almost noninnovative. Over the course of about a
decade, beginning in 1999, Whirlpool transformed itself from
a conservative company in a slow-moving, commodity busi-
ness into a creative engine spawning significant new revenues
from differentiated products and new businesses. Whirlpool’s
transformation has been well documented, most recently in the
2008 book Unleashing Innovation by Nancy Tennant Snyder,
who was charged with spearheading the change. We will not
repeat the story here, but rather will highlight the essential
Enabler elements of the process described in her book. In doing
so, we will take a somewhat different stance on the case. Sny-
der highlighted the creativity unleashed by changing the cul-
ture of Whirlpool. Here, we focus on themes that are critical to
ongoing corporate entrepreneurship: strategy, resource alloca-
tion, and executive engagement.
As we have emphasized several times already—and will con-
tinue to do as we move forward—the shift toward an ongoing
corporate entrepreneurship effort should begin with a careful
strategic assessment, so that innovation efforts can be focused.
(Snyder begins one of her chapters with a quote by David Allen:
“It is hard to be fully creative without constraint. Try painting
without a canvas.”) Dave Whitwam, who was then CEO,
believed that Whirlpool could gain sustainable competitive