As a follow-up to my previous article on the challenges of “corporate entrepreneurship” (a term inherently loaded with tension), I’d now like to focus on best practices of “getting it right.” If you missed the previous articles, I highly recommend going back to review them. They provide insight to the inherent complexities facing those who embark on this journey, and important context for how to apply the best practices I’ll propose in the coming articles.

In the course of our innovation work over many years we’ve benchmarked and worked with dozens of companies and hundreds of leaders (innovators and entrepreneurs) that have led us to conclude on a set of “7 keys to success.” I’d like to zoom-in on them one-at-a-time in the next few articles.

The first is that the CEO/C-suite must provide “Vision & Championing” for the overall entrepreneurship effort of the enterprise. While it may seem obvious, this is typically where we find significant gaps, and where entrepreneurship initiatives either rise or fall. Why? Let’s break this success-factor it down into specific components … what it looks like, why it’s important and what “Vision & Championing” actually means:

• Protection: entrepreneurship is counter-cultural by nature and therefore has to be protected – it’s a different way of working, often a separate entity, different profiles of people, it must have permission to play by different rules & measure and by different metrics. Because of the “cumulative differences” to most parts of the mainstream, the c-suite must be ready to take on the corporate-antibodies that will otherwise kill these tender new cells.
• Buy-in: entrepreneurship can’t just be “tolerated” or seen as a temporary fad. It has be “their idea” (senior leadership), a “must-have,” with a coherent & strong conviction around a strategic-rationale for its necessity to the future of the company (where it fits, and why we have to do it).
• Commitment/Support: this takes buy-in to the next level by putting skin in the game – resources, brand assets, budgets, great people (not the leftovers), active communication (internal and external), removal of roadblocks, frequent personal/visible attention/presence/interest.
• Courage & Faith: it’s a long, hard road with most seedlings dying along the way and only a few mighty trees surviving over years & years of time. It takes patience, dogged courage and a deep conviction to continue believing – despite frequent failure (which is the name of the game) – to stay committed to see results. Lack of this commitment is the primary reason 80% of corporate incubators fail…because executive leadership simply can’t sustain the above over the long-term to see results (for various reasons – changes in leadership, financial pressures, shifts in strategy, cultural clash, lack of focus, etc.).

While all “best practices” we will review together in the future are interrelated and important, they all rely on “Vision & Championing” as the foundation. With it, almost any obstacle can be overcome and goal achieved. Without it, the “house of entrepreneurship” (no matter how well designed) will eventually crumble.

Picture: www.pexels.com

One of the major focus-areas of our consulting practice is helping companies innovate by re-connecting with customer needs in order to bring new “high-traction-breakthrough-offers” to market. Remarkably, a significant majority of these clients are corporates (or large organizations) who feel a sense of urgency around this subject and look to entrepreneurship and startup-incubation as a key way to make it happen. Why is this the case? – the answer has many dimensions but is mostly centered on the need to break out of the rigidity, stagnation and incrementalism that characterizes large organizations and instead embrace the behaviors intrinsic to entrepreneurship – risk taking, customer-centricity, breakthrough-ideas, speed, growth, etc…

While this logic intuitively makes sense, realizing it “in practice” proves to be extraordinarily difficult and often elusive. In fact, it often ends in frustration, disillusionment, performance far below expectations, and significant resources wasted chasing a pipe-dream. Why?

To answer this question, it’s important to zoom out to get a perspective on the real problem and the daunting challenge it represents. I’d like to introduce you to two analogies, or parables, that I believe help visualize and internalize the dilemma (each of them bring light to different elements of the problem):

• Building a Jungle-Animal-Habitat in the City – imagine being given this mission in the middle of New York City. This would be an extraordinarily difficult and require an immense amount of compromises (essentially building a zoo) – artificial habitats, confined spaces, imported non-local nutrition, specially skilled workers, etc… The bottom line is that combining a foreign habitat with a local ecosystem is immensely challenging and only possible with significant “artificial support”, barriers/protections, and concessions.
• Speedboat Chained to an Aircraft Carrier – imagine the USS John F. Kennedy (1,092 feet in length and 100,000 tons) built as a giant platform whose core function is to be a resource- & operational- base for battle. Its key attributes are stability, capacity, reach and range that require a complex set of hierarchy and processes to operate what is essentially a “floating airport.” On the other hand think of a speedboat – small payload, speed, short distances, few people, etc. Now imagine the strange thought of them chained together… the speedboat can do whatever it wants to do until it gets to the end of the chain…then it’s going the same speed as the aircraft carrier.

If understanding the problem is fifty percent of the solution (and, yes…some exist!), I hope these parables begin to spark your thinking regarding the multi-dimensional challenges facing “corporate entrepreneurship” (a term which most would agree is full of tension & paradox). In future articles we will attempt to highlight and explore some of these dimensions & ramifications at a deeper level.

However, to further provoke your thinking on the the problem and its application to real life, I’d like to leave you with a few questions – 1) how long is the “entrepreneurship-chain” in your organization at which your innovation efforts are bound by the same constraints as the mother ship?, 2) whats is the list of specific factors that make up these constraints/compromises? (we’ll explore these constraints, and what to do about them, in future posts).

picture: www.pexels.com