Page 176 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Which Model Is Right for You? 163

was increasingly driven by its business unit partnerships. At
the same time, Darukhanavala’s team at BP was so successful
that senior management applied pressure to his group to
expand. The group resisted, arguing that it was precisely its
focus and dynamic team approach that made it successful.
Instead, the group found new ways to add value without
expanding the core team or changing the mission. Business
unit partnering was a way to increase its value to the corpora-
tion without abandoning the basic strategic model.
In the final section, we’ll consider some of the “down the
road” issues that may influence your corporate entrepreneur-
ship design. Before doing so, Table 4-1 summarizes the points
made in this chapter about the three deliberate models of cor-
porate entrepreneurship.

Down the Road: The Transition
and Scaling Challenge

When you begin your corporate entrepreneurship effort in
earnest, you will naturally begin by collecting ideas and per-
forming initial screening and due diligence to find the most
promising concepts. Many companies have made the formerly
“fuzzy front end” of the corporate entrepreneurship process
more systematic and productive by implementing explicit pro-
cedures for generating, collecting, and evaluating new busi-
ness ideas, for example, scenario planning, technology
scouting, disciplined IP management, stage-gate milestone
management, and portfolio risk management tools. Your cor-
porate entrepreneurship effort may involve setting up an incu-
bator to shepherd promising new business concepts.
However, despite these sound planning and management
efforts, corporate entrepreneurship projects often stall at the