Page 163 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

150 grow from within

These factors make a difference in the type of corporate entre-
preneurship structure and practices that are most appropriate
for your company. For instance, the highly structured and
expensive commercialization process for a medical device or
pharmaceutical argues for a different type of corporate entre-
preneurship design from that used for consumer packaged
goods or a new Web site.

Divisional or Business Unit Autonomy

If divisions or business units enjoy a great deal of autonomy in
your corporation, a central organization aimed at overcoming
the barriers between them—sometimes called silos or
stovepipes (or, in the tongue-in-cheek version of one of our
clients, “cylinders of excellence”)—may be warranted. That cen-
tral organization might or might not have its own project fund-
ing, depending on corporate objectives and processes, as we
discussed earlier. In the Baxter case, the corporate entrepre-
neurship effort followed a series of other centrally driven strate-
gic initiatives, but it was modestly staffed and funded because
the creation of executive-level oversight mechanisms provided
a ready means for allocating additional funds to promising proj-
ects. (We will describe one such project in Chapter 5 when we
discuss the leadership of corporate entrepreneurship efforts.)

Divisional or Business Unit Diversity

If business units are in diverse, largely nonoverlapping busi-
ness areas, then there may be little perceived value in a corpo-
ratewide effort. Still, an Advocate-style organization could be
seen as a useful way to facilitate local innovation or drive
potentially transformative external technologies into business
units. If business units are diverse, but there is perceived value