Page 45 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

32 grow from within

We didn’t need technologists who would live in labs and in-
vent the future as the spirit moved them. . . . We needed peo-
ple who could build networks inside and outside the company,
understand what our business needs were and bring new tech-
nologies to the tasks. . . . We needed people who could act as
internal consultants, advocates for change, and partners to
our business unit leaders and managers.

By keeping the budget low (approximately $10 million per
year in a company with nearly $300 billion in revenues),
Darukhanavala forced his team to persuade business partners
to invest in designing, validating, and piloting new applica-
tions and capabilities.

Pitfalls of Corporate Entrepreneurship

While these examples resulted in quantified success, corporate
entrepreneurship can be treacherous. Before discussing man-
agement models for achieving organic, new business–led
growth, let’s consider the unfortunate conditions that can befall
corporate entrepreneurship initiatives: becoming too narrow,
too broad, or misaligned.
While other factors pose threats, such as adverse economic
cycles and top leadership turnover, we have selected these con-
ditions because they are to a large extent under the control of
management. Innovation leaders can take specific steps to mit-
igate or avoid each of them. These challenges befall many new
business creation teams, particularly in their early stages of
development. The good news is that, unlike the situation a
decade ago, many companies today have already gone down
this path, so it’s not too late to learn from their successes and
mistakes. The frameworks and approaches explored in later