Need Help Innovating Inside Big-Fat-Slow Organizations?
By
Dean DeBiase
Take it from me, innovation within big-fat-slow companies is an extremely tough challenge without the right people, platforms and passion needed to make a meaningful difference in creating the future. Grow From Within is an incredible book, authored by Reboot friends Rob Wolcott and his colleague Mike Lippitz.
In Grow From Within, Rob and Mike outline the impactful ways global companies are harnessing internal entrepreneurs and how you can find the right model for your organization now. Having been lucky enough to be an internal entrepreneur early in my career–developing new innovative products, partners, divisions and spinout companies–I can tell you this stuff really works and you will enjoy this book!
Here are some of Rob's and Mike's key finding and insights:
Internal entrepreneurial capabilities are becoming important for all types of organizations. Competition from new directions, driven by globalization, is making intrapreneurship an imperative.
A corporate entrepreneurship effort does not have to be expensive or disruptive in order to motivate your most creative and passionate employees to help your enterprise grow from within.
Their research has uncovered a range of new and successful approaches to innovation and corporate entrepreneurship. These approaches have been developed and implemented by many companies to drive billions of revenues in new business.
Contrary to popular perception, large companies can be exceptionally innovative, sometimes more so than small entrepreneurial companies. In fact, new business development involving complex systems or large-scale networks will never come out of a small start-up company.
Structure and process do not have to be the enemies of innovation. As companies grow, they have traditionally evolved structures, processes, and cultures that emphasize efficiency in addressing their core markets but unintentionally discourage or even outright punish entrepreneurial impulses. Grow From Within provides frameworks and tools for understanding and overcoming many organizational challenges.
Innovation needs to be about more than new products and technologies. Companies need to consider innovation as a new business design challenge in order to realize the potential of innovative opportunities that don’t neatly fit into the existing core.
Finding enough good ideas is rarely the problem. The greater challenge organizations face is creating the processes and capabilities to identify the best ideas and bring them to market in new ways.
