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Emerging Models of Corporate Entrepreneurship 117

the better part of a year to make a hire. Daru wanted people with
a strong background in IT technologies, but not with in-depth
expertise in any one. These people were not expected to be the
sources of new technology. Instead, they would need to be able
to interact with the broad IT ecosystem, develop an overview of
a given area, and quickly understand the trade-offs among the
available options. He also wanted most of the people reporting
to him to have experience in a business area of BP: exploration,
oil and gas production, refining, retail marketing, or some other
area. Ideally, he wanted to have at least one person from each
major BP business area. About a quarter of the team would be
outside hires, bright people in an IT field with at least 20 years of
significant experience. They would learn the oil business at BP.
The early years of the CTO office were characterized by exper-
imentation and learning as it defined its roles and processes in
connecting the external IT ecosystem with internal BP business
unit needs. The team initiated relationships with IT suppliers,
research firms, consultants, academics, venture capitalists, gov-
ernment agencies, industry groups, and major customers. Rela-
tionship building with the ecosystem was critical, as the CTO
office could not drive IT-based innovation without knowing the
IT industry pipeline. The CTO office discovered that these exter-
nal players were typically happy to engage with BP, as the com-
pany provided a “real-world” opportunity for vendors to apply
their products and build relationships with BP’s internal experts.
For its part, the CTO office committed to arriving at its decisions
quickly and providing constructive feedback if the projects did
not go forward, which stands in stark contrast to the typically
complex, time-consuming negotiations with many other large,
global companies.
At the same time, the CTO office also had to begin engaging
senior BP leadership; it was committed to doing more than just
“pushing” technology solutions to business units. Rather, it had