Page 58 - Grow from Within Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Understanding Corporate Entrepreneurship 45

sonably, to see a near-term return. In some respects, corporate
entrepreneurship, like any kind of significant organizational
change, is easier to implement in a private atmosphere. There
are rare public companies where investors are willing to pay
a high multiple for future gains from innovation (e.g.,
Google). For other large public companies, launching a cor-
porate entrepreneurship effort may require some explaining
to the investment community, to show the long-term value to
shareholders. (As with defending the effort to the CFO, some
early wins help.) For opportunities that appear to be “too far”
outside the corporate core, it may make sense to use an exter-
nal structure, such as a joint venture or spin-off. However,
doing so could diminish future opportunities in the space,
since the new venture will be more independent. Not only
will it not be seen, but it generally won’t leverage as much of
the corporate core. The essence of corporate entrepreneurship
is the creation of new businesses that require substantial and
continuous connections to core competencies in order to reach
their full potential.
Ultimately, there are no perfect answers to these chal-
lenges. The virtue of focus can become the vice of myopia.
A wide, comprehensive perspective can lead to diffused, ill-
focused action. The point is to find a balance and continu-
ally seek alignment with top management’s vision for the
future without becoming manacled to business as usual.
One prescription is to recognize that new business ventures
differ fundamentally from core businesses. A popular frame-
work for distinguishing the stages of a corporate entrepre-
neurship project and assessing a company’s overall portfolio
of projects is the Horizons of Growth Model, articulated in
Mehrdad Baghai, Stephen Coley, and David White’s 1999
book, The Alchemy of Growth. One may think of the stages as
follows: