Page 226 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Leadership from All Le vels 211

operating heads to be considered someone who is grounded
enough in our realities for me to believe in,” Riedel says.
Radical technology-based innovation does not necessarily
require radical new technology. It often requires new business
design more than technology acumen. If significant aspects of
a new business concept are unfamiliar to the company, a large
part of the corporate entrepreneur’s role will be to convince,
confirm, and cajole others to support the project, or at least stay
out of its way. Having the right people on board is critical. “If
you have the right kind of people, who are truly of a different
mindset, and you protect them from the daily grind of an oper-
ating unit, and you ask them to be curious enough and uncon-
ventional enough in how they look at the enterprise, they come
up with good ideas all the time,” Riedel advises.
Speaking specifically of his team at Baxter, “The team that I
had . . . was so passionate and so convinced of the real purpose
of this group that it was virtually impossible to discourage
them enough for them to say . . . ‘I’m out of here.’ Whereas peo-
ple from the operating units had a real desire to be pulled in
and be allowed to work on an incubator for a while. It was
almost like a mental rejuvenation from the daily grind.”

Lessons Regarding Leadership Support for
the Aspiring Corporate Entrepreneur

The Baxter example illustrates both program (NTRI) and pro -
ject (Cellular Therapies) leadership. The result was a new busi-
ness within an emerging growth area for Baxter. While
leadership of individual projects requires talent and focus as
well, many high-quality existing resources adequately address
this challenge. While most books focus primarily on product or
process innovation as opposed to corporate entrepreneurship,