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128 grow from within

reinvention of television, as they permit you to download con-
tent from your neighbors without the need for a large content
distribution network. Already today the BBC uses peer-to-peer
networking to distribute some of its programming. The beauty
of peer-to-peer technology is that the more customers there are,
the faster the network works. So there is clearly a market
opportunity there.
Cisco did not have a lot of experience back in 2005 with con-
sumer markets. But Cisco knew that it needed to play here and
in other emerging information technology markets in order to
continue growing at a pace sufficient to maintain its stock
value. The question was, how could Cisco take advantage of
such trends? Acquisitions and partnerships, a Cisco strength,
could certainly play a role. But in order to make acquisitions
and partnerships most productive, Cisco would also need to
begin building organic capabilities. It would need to become a
real player and contributor in this space.
The answer for Cisco was to create a new organization called
the Emerging Markets Technology Group (EMTG). EMTG’s
mission would be to detect important market trends while they
were still nascent, conceive ways in which Cisco could take
advantage of them, and organically grow new ventures inside
the company. Cisco decided that a central group with a strong
mandate would be required to defend corporate entrepre-
neurship projects against both corporate antibodies (the peo-
ple who want to kill it before it gets started) and corporate love
(the people who want to latch onto it and turn it toward their
priorities). In looking at other companies, Cisco found no suc-
cessful examples of decentralized new business incubation, so
it decided that EMTG must have a budget for that. Finally, it
was deemed important for a central group to be accountable
for projects all the way to building and selling product, not just
developing concepts for others to prove out.