Page 186 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Which Model Is Right for You? 171

• Explicitly address business unit disincentives. “Corporate
antibodies” to new businesses are the bane of corporate
entrepreneurship projects. Firms that address the
problem head-on tend to do better. One of the more
effective methods, as suggested by Christensen, is to
simply create a new business unit to house the new
opportunity. Some firms have standard processes for
creating and staffing new business units. Others have
formal, corporate-level processes—for example, control
of personnel development—that serve to mediate
business unit interests.
In some companies, bypassing existing business units is
not considered workable. In such cases, the suggestions of
the IRI/RPI research team, emphasizing explicit transition
planning, especially for resources, are sound. In such a
context, corporate entrepreneurship projects are generally
required to obtain investment and oversight from business
units, sometimes at relatively early stages of the process.
A company can decide where along the line existing
business units must be brought in, depending on the
kind of corporate entrepreneurship objectives it has
promulgated.
• Hire and support forward-thinking “business builder”
managers who are skilled at navigating the turbulence of
transition and scaling. Many authors have noted that the
right manager for a corporate entrepreneurship project is
not the same as the right manager for the development of
a new product or for an acquisition. Successful corporate
entrepreneurship projects demand flexibility in building
the business model, which requires a different type of
experience and disposition from early-stage exploration or
from management of an established business. One
advantage of forming a dedicated corporate