Page 197 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

182 grow from within

defined job, and people may not feel inclined to devote more
time and energy to the needs of the leader of a prerevenue
business that is not connected to their typical responsibilities.
While rejection is often an active process, new businesses can
also sometimes fall victim to benign neglect. Indifferent or
well-meaning people may fail to provide assistance when the
corporate entrepreneurship team needs it. Only senior man-
agement has the resources to overcome both active resistance
and benign neglect, and this antirejection effort must persist
throughout the development and launch phases of the new
business. A new business is never safe until it has proven its
financial impact on the firm’s top and bottom lines.
In many ways, new business creation within an existing
firm is analogous to a human organ transplant. Following an
organ transplant, the human immune system quickly recog-
nizes the implanted organ as a foreign object and attempts to
isolate or destroy it. Without the ongoing administration of
powerful antirejection drugs, the host body will reject the
organ, even at the expense of its own survival. Without a
proper cultural context, structures, and processes, established,
complex corporations will ferret out foreign entities in much
the same manner.
Those precious few firms that have been able to foster entre-
preneurship across the company, such as the Google and
Whirlpool cases we examined earlier, provide the exceptions
that prove the rule. Even in these cases, we observe a cultural
substrate that is supportive of entrepreneurial activity and a
top management consensus regarding new business creation
as a focal objective of the firm. Ultimately, only top manage-
ment can administer the medicine that is necessary to avoid
rejection. While proper structures and processes go a long way,
maintaining the firm’s focus, effecting culture change, and
maintaining the right cultural environment for corporate entre-