Page 230 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

C HAPTER 6

Grow from

Within; Learn

from Everywhere

No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for
someone else.
—Bill Joy, cofounder, Sun Microsystems

It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new
problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to
be won.
—John F. Kennedy (1917–1963)

Looking Outside, Worldwide

All corporate entrepreneurship involves learning, building in
new ways on the knowledge that makes your organization suc-
cessful today. It’s more than pushing someone else’s product
through your sales channel or being only a financial investor.
(Leave these latter opportunities to venture capitalists, or at
least to a corporate venture group. Even that is debatable!)
Being great at corporate entrepreneurship usually requires con-
necting with and learning from the outside world: other com-
panies, entrepreneurs, university researchers, inventors,
government regulators—anyone who might be important to

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