Page 121 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

108 grow from within

cultural application for its clothes washers by taking a creative
turn on a customer service problem among its rural customers.
Haier clothes washers were being returned by rural customers
because of clogging of the water pipes. When customer ser vice
representatives were sent out to investigate, they discovered
that farmers were using the machines to clean root vegetables.
With a few simple adjustments, Haier launched a successful
product aimed at that market, aptly named Big Yam. Big Yam,
which has become a bestseller, is generating revenue in an area
that would be easy to copy technically, but in which Haier has
created brand equity that is not so easy to displace. Whirlpool
might be able to discover similar opportunities if it broadened
its scope.
As the Google and Whirlpool examples illustrate, the
Enabler Model is not just about allocating capital for corporate
entrepreneurship. Personnel development and executive
engagement are also critical. The Enabler Model assumes that
there are ample good ideas around the company and, more
important, that there are individuals and teams that are inter-
ested and willing to flesh them out. Recruiting and retention
of people who have entrepreneurial dispositions—but who can
and want to operate within a large company—are essential.
Google, for instance, spends an extraordinary amount of time
and effort on recruiting. To be hired, a program manager or
senior engineering candidate might go through 20 interviews
in multiple stages before the company determines whether that
individual has the right combination of “entrepreneurial
DNA,” broad technical talent, and intellectual agility. In the
Whirlpool case, a bold multiyear initiative brought forward the
latent creativity of employees steeped in the culture and his-
tory of what was otherwise a staid and stable industry.
Executive engagement is also essential if people are to trust
that the company is committed to turning good and proven