Page 160 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Which Model Is Right for You? 147

growth for the company a strategic priority. Having overcome
some earlier operational challenges through the initiatives
that Hunt had spearheaded, Baxter decided to address long-
term growth and gear up the stock price. Innovation would
be critical to success. Kraemer’s analysis suggested that there
were particular opportunities in the “white spaces” between
business units.
To begin, Baxter founded a corporate innovation team (CIT)
to address this challenge from a companywide, strategic per-
spective. The CIT evaluated the project pipeline and identified
and filled near-term capability gaps, such as project manage-
ment. For concepts that required more development but that
transcended or cut across Baxter’s divisions—areas where
existing business units would be unlikely to venture on their
own, but where Baxter could still add value—Hunt proposed
that Baxter also create an incubator. In 2000, Baxter created a
Non-Traditional Research and Innovation (NTRI) group to
serve as the incubator. It also formed an innovation leadership
team, including six top Baxter corporate executives and the
presidents of each of Baxter’s divisions, to support the effort.
Hunt was chosen to lead the incubator and was named vice
president of nontraditional innovation.
Hunt began building Baxter’s new business incubator,
bringing together people with complementary business skills
and significant internal networks. Her team began in 2000 with
five core people who possessed “entrepreneurial DNA” and a
$3 million budget, and it grew to nearly 15 people and $7 mil-
lion by early 2002 (out of about a $400 million overall R&D
effort). These people, in turn, were building cross-functional
teams with people from across Baxter divisions and functions
to pursue projects with serious growth potential that would be
unlikely to happen within individual business units. The NTRI
team would take a concept up to the point where either a tra-