Page 212 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Leadership from All Le vels 197

business creation team that thrives in the latter. People who are
exceptional executors can become uncomfortable and under-
perform in true corporate entrepreneurship groups because so
many things are simply unknown. One former member of a
corporate entrepreneurship group at a Fortune 500 company,
a self-described misfit for the team, expressed a feeling of “con-
stant uncertainty . . . like I never knew if we were doing the
right things.” To everyone’s credit, she left the corporate entre-
preneurship group and returned to being a significant con-
tributor to one of the company’s established business units. She
left with an enhanced appreciation for the role of the corporate
entrepreneurship team and ended up becoming a trusted ally.
Not everyone is fit for creating the future, but companies need
people who are good at both, exploring and exploiting, and
they need to be enabled in their own ways.
Once you’ve selected the right team, the corporate entre-
preneurship leader’s primary role is to coach. Being a corpo-
rate entrepreneur is tough, and the challenges can be
nonobvious and difficult to anticipate. Younger team members
will require mentorship, and even seasoned managers will look
to the team leader to steer them through obstacles at the com-
pany’s highest levels. If you’ve recruited people who thrive in
the early stages of new business creation, you can also encour-
age a sense of mission. There is something motivating about
creating new things. Try tying it to your larger company’s
stated mission. Glenn Armstrong, vice president of business
innovations at Alticor Corporation, often recalls the company’s
vision: “‘Helping people live better lives’—that’s what we’re
about in Innovations.” New corporate entrepreneurs, in par-
ticular, need coaching and support. They are by definition
building businesses that do not currently fit within the com-
pany’s established organization charts. After your group has a
few new businesses in development, consider hosting monthly