Page 19 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

6 grow from within

mination of an entrepreneur or a team of entrepreneurs? Even
those rare leading companies that were constructed through
other means, such as private equity roll-ups or spin-outs, typ-
ically can trace their roots to entrepreneurs who followed their
passions. Many of them arose without an exceptional new tech-
nology or product, as entrepreneurship is much broader than
technology. Starbucks convinced Americans to pay $4 for cof-
fee, yet it didn’t actually invent anything. It did create a
unique, consistent customer experience that has since influ-
enced American and even world culture. Some companies, like
Enterprise Rent-A-Car and FedEx, invented new industry par-
adigms, while still others, such as Four Seasons, Virgin
Atlantic, and Lexus, created new levels of service.
The phenomenon of innovation-led new business develop-
ment is not unique to the Virgins or FedExs of the world. If a
new company enters an established market without some
meaningful differentiator, something to distinguish it from its
competitors, what chance does it have to succeed? These dif-
ferentiating factors can be quite diverse, but you’ll typically
find something that distinguishes the companies that drive sig-
nificant growth. Companies that persist for decades and even
centuries, like DuPont or Nokia, undergo transformative
change at times in their history. David Yaun, vice president,
Marketing and Communications, at IBM and a founder of the
company’s Global Innovation Outlook (GIO) program,
explained in a 2006 interview with Kevin Werbach, “IBM has
transformed itself fundamentally at least three times in its his-
tory. . . . In the 1920s, we sold meat scales, cheese slicers. . . .
Then we became a punch card company, and then we became
the monolithic mainframe manufacturer. . . . Actually, more
than half of our population now is in services and consulting.”
Consider your own company. What originally made it great?
Odds are that it was more than just a product or service inno-