Page 210 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Leadership from All Le vels 195

to the cause? Which people could stand in the way, and what
can you do about them? For all the people who are important
to your group’s efforts to create value and survive, create a sim-
ple plan to reach out to them, better understand their perspec-
tives, and involve them in discussions, meetings, and programs
that might help tie them into the corporate entrepreneurship
group’s activities. Do this intentionally.
Next, create an engagement plan, execute against it, and track
your progress. We helped one senior, veteran corporate entre-
preneurship leader at a large global company build an engage-
ment plan. He and his team recognized the value of the activity
and began with the best intentions. Unfortunately, the group
soon reverted to a nearly single-minded focus on its portfolio
of new business creation projects. It is great to be focused, but
new business creation projects can easily crowd out navigating
and promoting the overall corporate entrepreneurship pro-
gram. A few months later, the corporate entrepreneurship
group leader ended up in a CEO’s staff meeting where two of
his colleagues on the senior staff directly questioned the cor-
porate entrepreneurship team’s raison d’être. Those same exec-
utives had been on the engagement plan, but unfortunately,
they had not been engaged. Immediately following this, the
group returned promoting and navigating to its list of priori-
ties and began updating people on its progress each week.
Recruiting depends on your team’s objectives. If your man-
date is to develop leading new technologies, then you’ll obvi-
ously require people with deep technology skills. However,
this is often not the case. While you’ll need people who are
comfortable and conversant with the relevant technologies, a
new business creation group’s primary requirements are, well,
new business–building skills. Deep technologists are often
exactly the wrong people to build new businesses. Entrepre-
neurial skills are things like selling and promoting, network-