Page 199 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

184 grow from within

presenting their commitment to the ranks throughout the firm
and affirming that this function remains core to what Google
means as a company.
If a firm makes a commitment to fostering new business cre-
ation, these new initiatives often encounter substantially more
resistance than do projects devoted to operational or business-
as-usual issues. The negative reactions to such unfamiliar
activities that we have observed within established firms
range from simple avoidance, curiosity, and neglect all the
way to active sabotage, in cases where people feel threatened
by a challenge to the status quo. Clearly, senior executives
must play an active part in corporate entrepreneurship in
order for the new ventures to succeed. But what, specifically,
should top management’s role in the process be? We have
identified six functions in which the senior executive team
must be engaged:

Frame Provide strategic framing
Proselytize Validate and promote
Allocate Allocate resources with commitment
Coach Recruit, motivate, and educate
Track Track performance against metrics
Embody Lead by example

Few things are more important to guiding new business cre-
ation than an effective strategic frame, an actionable definition
of the space within which a company is currently playing and
intends to play in the future. There are many resources avail-
able to describe effective strategy development and framing.
We won’t duplicate them here; however, the salient point is to
make sure that the company’s stated strategy is broad enough
to enable new businesses to be relevant and to take the com-
pany in directions that support its long-range objectives.