Page 123 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

110 grow from within

determining the overall innovation budgets or go/no-go deci-
sions on specific innovation projects).

The Advocate Model
The Advocate Model represents another way in which compa-
nies can evolve beyond being Opportunists. In some corporate
cultures, business units enjoy significant autonomy from the
corporate core. In such an environment, a new business oppor-
tunity must, as a practical matter, be adopted by a business unit
in order to come to fruition. This does not mean, however, that
business units are left on their own to develop new businesses.
In the Advocate Model, a company assigns organizational own-
ership for driving the creation of new businesses to a desig-
nated corporate-level group, but it intentionally provides the
group with only a modest budget. Advocate organizations act
as evangelists and innovation experts, facilitating corporate
entrepreneurship in conjunction with business units, which
must demonstrate their commitment to new business develop-
ment by paying most of the bills.
The Advocate Model is a relatively new and in some ways
counterintuitive form of corporate entrepreneurship. A pri-
mary purpose of contemporary corporate entrepreneurship
efforts is to overcome the resistance of business units to adopt-
ing immature new business concepts. So how can an organi-
zation that has no direct power over business units accomplish
very much? In some corporate contexts, it cannot. But, sur-
prisingly, in many corporate contexts, it can.
We provide two examples here: DuPont, the 200-year-old
global conglomerate famous for its inventions in advanced
materials, and BP, the U.K.-based international oil giant.
DuPont was a pioneer in this method of new business creation.
At BP, an advocate-style organization drives IT-based trans-