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Leadership from All Le vels 179

opment of stealth fighter aircraft in the 1970s, when he was the
undersecretary for defense research, the third-ranking official
in the U.S. Department of Defense. At the time, the concept was
not embraced by the U.S. Air Force, which initially saw little
value in a relatively slow plane with limited maneuverability.
This type of fighter plane, if it could be built, would only mar-
ginally improve the Air Force’s performance in its current mis-
sions. But Perry understood that the plane could perform
missions against highly defended targets that the Air Force
would not attempt because of the high loss rates, and that the
ability to undertake such missions could transform conven-
tional warfare to the advantage of the United States. This is the
type of corporate entrepreneurship project—one that requires
new types of organizational behaviors—for which senior lead-
ership steering is essential.
Perry chaired a special executive team overseeing the devel-
opment program. The program manager would report techni-
cal and bureaucratic problems to the team. Perry would handle
bureaucratic problems personally. After a few months, he
noticed that fewer and fewer bureaucratic problems seemed to
be arising. The program manager reported that the reason was
Perry’s direct, personal involvement at the beginning. Word
got around that he would use his authority to break bureau-
cratic logjams. This knowledge created an imputed authority
for the program manager, making Perry’s personal interven-
tion less necessary as time went on. We’ll return to the stealth
case later in the chapter.
We’ve seen a few exceptions that prove the rule: new busi-
ness creation that was successful without senior management
backing. Against the odds, a team within a large industrial
company built a new business that ended up creating an
entirely new product category. However, despite the product’s
exceptional growth and great margins, the parent company