Page 23 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

10 grow from within

The new business development results of large firms today
matter even when compared to the universe of independent
venture-backed start-ups.
IBM’s EBO program is going strong after 10 years, and it has
helped IBM enter a range of new markets, from life sciences to
digital media. As the IBM case illustrates, though, new busi-
ness creation as a corporate capability takes time to develop. It
may start small—which is why many corporate entrepreneur-
ship efforts are, unfortunately, prematurely terminated—but it
can grow into a substantial contributor to corporate growth. It
requires strategic commitment and organizational solutions
that are uniquely adapted to a company’s culture, structure,
and context. What works for IBM won’t necessarily work for
Kraft. You might not need home runs—a series of base hits
might suffice.
In this book, you will learn about how several large corpo-
rations have made successful corporate entrepreneurship a
driver for organic growth. You’ll meet David Patchen, head of
Cargill’s Emerging Business Accelerator, which has launched
several “white space” businesses that have added hundreds of
millions of dollars to Cargill’s bottom line. And Phiroz “Daru”
Darukhanavala, BP’s chief technology officer for the Digital
and Communications Technology Group, whose team has gen-
erated more than a billion dollars of quantified business value
throughout the corporation since 2001 through innovative
applications of information technology. You’ll meet Robert A.
“Bob” Cooper, former leader of DuPont’s Market-Driven Inno-
vation (MDI) initiative. MDI has reinvigorated new business
development inside of several DuPont business units and has
become a sought-after opportunity for up-and-coming man-
agers. A single DuPont business unit leader credited the sup-
port of the MDI program with generating nearly half a billion
dollars of new revenues for her business unit.