For those interested in trends in international innovation, here’s the podcast of an interview I did with the organizers of an Innovation Summit taking place at Chapman University later this month. The discussion is based on my work with the Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN), which brings together leaders from major companies that are fostering new business design, and with [...]
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In our Fast Company post yesterday, we highlight an important editorial for the business community: The “Schumpeter” column of The Economist Holiday Edition proposes that the business community must better engage the global dialogue. We agree. The business community must do both what’s right and constantly explore the rights and responsibilities of operating as a business with constituencies [...]
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In our post yesterday at Fast Company, we describe guiding principles for building a robust network, which is one of the most important factors to succeeding as an innovator or entrepreneur, inside or outside a large corporation:
Simple rules rule
Determine your objectives
Build diversity into your group
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Guest Post by Stephanie Wolcott
In a recent NYT article, Will Big Business Save the Earth?, Jared Diamond, prominent scientist and author, posits that multinational corporations can be important forces for positive environmental practices. He cites solid examples from Chevron, Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola as they improve their environmental performance.
Indeed, companies around the world are making an [...]
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Core businesses become core for a reason: their business designs work–or worked. Eventually, all businesses require renovation. Sometimes, they require revolution. Some signs are obvious, like falling margins or shrinking market shares, though it could be that you’re just underperforming. What other factors might indicate you need a fundamental redesign? In our post on Fast [...]
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I received a great question from a reader of Grow From Within about the relationship of corporate entrepreneurship—that is, largely internal new business creation—to forming a subsidiary or spinning out a new business concept. “Can’t these be pursued within a firm together as a strategy? What is the impact of corporate entrepreneurship on the internal [...]
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How can corporate entrepreneurs be sure whether they are moving in the right direction in the early stages? In our post on Fast Company today, we highlight three major signposts of progress toward building new businesses.
CEO and Senior Management Commitment is Solid.
Your Energies are Focused.
You’re Already Planning for Transition and Scaling.
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We’re pleased that our article on innovation leadership was placed front and center in the Chicago Chamber of Commerce’s newsletter today. The article picks up on some of the themes in previous posts here: That corporate entrepreneurship is about more than new products and services and that structure and process are not the enemies of innovation. It emphasizes [...]
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Rob Wolcott is quoted in this businessweek article about faster, cheaper product development in India, “driven by scarce resources and attention to customers’ immediate needs, not their lifestyle wants.” This type of innovation, aimed at serving vast swaths of humanity with very low income, is not about just redesigning products to take out cost. In Chapter 6 [...]
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Fostering corporate entrepreneurship means a new focus on attracting and retaining people with the determination and skill to build bridges to future growth. Assuming your company is open to the possibility of entrepreneurial growth, do you have what it takes to be a corporate entrepreneur? This posting at Fast Company describes five characteristics of the species [...]
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Guest Post by Stephanie Wolcott
Mary Tripsas from Harvard Business School recently reported in the New York Times on two new online platforms for sharing eco-friendly technology: the Eco-Patent Commons provides environmental patents to anyone for free; The Green Xchange, which launches in 2010, will facilitate licensing of patents to non-competitors. While it remains to be seen [...]
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In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice.
But in practice, there is.”
– Lawrence “Yogi” Berra, American Baseball Legend
How do you successfully build a corporate entrepreneurship capacity? Our research has found that it’s a multi-stage process.
The first key element is a mandate for growth or transformation accompanied by a vision that points in the general [...]
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On Friday, I had the privilege to join Jim Blasingame on his nationwide radio show, The Small Business Advocate. Jim refers to himself as the “small business advocate” and that he certainly is. In addition to a live radio show in 50 markets and blog and online archive of interviews, Jim is a champion for [...]
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3M’s innovation center, built about 3 years ago, sits across a pond from a “square mile of research labs” focused on dozens of different industry groups. The center’s focus is on exposing customers to the broad array of 3M technologies, in order to help create innovative solutions. I was part of a group of seven innovation [...]
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In our six years of research on innovation and corporate entrepreneurship, we did not find a single company that felt they lacked good ideas. Rather, the difficult task was creating an organization and processes that refine ideas, build businesses, and bring the best of them to market.
There is no one-size-fits-all structure and process to building [...]
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Creating Entrepreneurial Behavior within a Mature Company – Jim Blasingame's Small Business Advocate, November, 13, 2009.
True Marketing Doesn’t Just Sell the Story – Advertising Age, September 2, 2009.
Playing Well With Others – Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2009.
