Driving Innovation in Large Corporations
It is great to experience an increasing interest on intrapreneurship – the process in which employees act as entrepreneurs within established companies and start new ventures.
The latest example is an interesting article, Driving Innovation in Large Corporations, written by Ricardo dos Santos from Qualcomm Ventures, Stig Poulsen from Danfoss Ventures, Dr. William R. Wagner from HP Imaging and Printing Group and William Aulet from MIT Entrepreneurship Center.
They all have extensive experience on innovation in large corporations and in particular with corporate business plan competitions. In the article, they state that the benefits of business plan competitions are typically threefold:
• Create New Companies – The competitions can create new ventures as a result of the motivation created through financial or recognition incentives.
• Foster Enhanced Skill Development – The competitions serve as both motivators and tools to enhance overall business acumen and entrepreneurial behaviors.
• Build Cross-Functional Teams – The competition can be a platform whereby people with different skills and the common goal of creating a new venture can meet and become partners. The resulting social and professional networks enhance the ability of individuals to realize their goals.
I also like their set of questions that can help decide whether an organization is a good candidate for corporate business plan competitions:
1. Is innovation fundamental to your company’s business strategy?
2. Does the CEO believe this and aggressively push for innovation?
3. Is your company willing to take a long term view of innovation programs?
4. Will a CBPC complement existing innovation programs in your company today?
5. Is your organization willing to make a significant investment in a CBPC program? (>$500K out of pocket plus a material time commitment of senior executives)
6. Will your company take seriously ideas that come out of such a competition?
7. Is there an identified champion who is passionate about running such a CBPC program?
Check out the full article: Driving Innovation in Large Corporations
If you like this topic, you should also check out an interesting discussion in the 15inno by Stefan Lindegaard group on LinkedIn. Click on Discussions once you get inside the group…
What I find interesting beyond the direct goals that are achieved by a CBPC is the networking of ideas and resources that must happen from within a company. I would imagine that networking and collaboration rates must go through the roof during a CBPC cycle as people gather what resources are available at hand from within their organization. The benefits must be immediately seen by people going out of their way to network and create social infrastructure outside of their departments.
I'm curious though how are the negative consequences dealt with, i.e. internal competition can breed some conflict within the workplace. A hopefully rare, but real consequence that must be addressed.
The April issue of Harvard Business Review p.74 had a piece on Envy at Work. I read it before attending a conference where the word Innovation was bandied about quite a bit – and I asked how to reconcile the two. Looking forward to a thoughtful discussion on this topic.