Corporate Innovation Management: Unstructured Time

Google became a pioneer in the domain of corporate innovation some years ago by introducing the notion of 20% unstructured time in which employees could work on whatever they wanted.

Other large enterprises followed along, and started experimenting with their own interpretations of unstructured time.

Most came to the conclusion, including Google itself, that completely unstructured time is not productive, and does not yield innovative ideas or projects.
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Corporate Innovation Management: Changing the Culture

Most large organizations are facing the challenge of a workforce that’s gotten into a routine, a rhythm, and is not thinking outside the box. There is no excitement. There isn’t enough creative energy on a day-to-day basis, and there’s no methodology to inculcate such energy in a systematic way.

I want to call out another specific point from my previous article, Corporate Innovation Management: A Methodology Discussion, that addresses this issue. >>>

Corporate Innovation Management: Methodology

Last summer, I was invited to spend half a day with approximately 40 Fortune 500 Chief Innovation Officers at Xerox PARC, and discuss our experience with corporate innovation methodology through the 1M/1M Incubator In A Box program.

A few months later, Jim Euchner, the CIO of Goodyear, interviewed me for the Research-Technology Management journal. It’s a comprehensive discussion that those of you thinking about corporate innovation may find interesting. For the month of May, the interview is accessible free of charge at the journal’s website. [Business Acceleration at Scale: An Interview with Sramana Mitra]

Here, I will summarize some key excerpts from the discussion: >>>

Corporate Innovation Management: The Role of Prototyping

I want to call out another specific point from my previous article, Corporate Innovation Management: A Methodology Discussion.

In my interview with Jim Euchner for the Research-Technology Management journal, I said:

My philosophy, at least in the IT space, is that we can safely assume that people will be able to build their products. Prototyping is not what we emphasize until later in the process. The first thing—the first order of business—is answering the question as to whether there is a business case for doing the project.

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Corporate Innovation Management: Tyranny of the TAM is Less Severe

I want to call out a specific point that connects the dots between two of my prior articles, From $100k-$1M: Tyranny Of The TAM and Corporate Innovation Management: A Methodology Discussion.

In my interview with Jim Euchner for the Research-Technology Management journal, I said:

If you think of entrepreneurship outside of a corporation, often business ideas with a total available market of $200 million, $300 million will get ignored. It may not be possible to bootstrap them, but venture capitalists will not fund them. These are ideal for corporate innovation.

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Corporate Innovation Management: A Methodology Discussion

Last summer, I was invited to spend half a day with ~40 Fortune 500 Chief Innovation Officers at Xerox PARC, and discuss our experience with corporate innovation methodology through the 1M/1M Incubator In A Box program.

A few months later, Jim Euchner, the CIO of Goodyear, interviewed me for the Research-Technology Management journal. It’s a comprehensive discussion that those of you thinking about corporate innovation may find interesting. For the month of May, the interview is accessible free of charge at the journal’s website.

Please read: Business Acceleration at Scale: An Interview with Sramana Mitra

Teaching Employees To Be Entrepreneurs Will Become Standard Fare

Teaching employees to be Entrepreneurs will become standard fare in corporate America.

I wrote an earlier piece on this topic Why Corporations Should Train More Intrapreneurs, back in October.

In today’s post, I want to discuss some trends we’re seeing in our work with various corporate partners who are either already implementing or considering internal programs for teaching employees entrepreneurship.

First, consider what an entrepreneur does.
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What Corporate VCs Need To Do Differently

Corporate venture capital takes many different forms. The most common one is to help the parent company keep its fingers on strategic innovation. Typically, this includes both adjacent revenue opportunities, as well as new business areas, including some that may be disruptive to the company’s core business.

My main observation about what corporate venture capital needs to do differently from generic VC is around how the subject of TAM (Total Available Market) is considered.

In ordinary venture capital, more often than not, the goal is to identify billion dollar, hyper fast-growth business opportunities.

These, though, are extremely difficult to find.

There are, however, many more $100 million, $200 million business opportunities out there.
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Why Corporations Should Train More Intrapreneurs

Consider this scenario:

A large technology corporation has a few hundred products that are sold to thousands of enterprises and small-medium businesses.

Because of the fast pace of change in technology, every single product in the portfolio experiences market pressures of various kinds. Competition from startups. Integration requirements with external products. Architecture changes in the technology stack. New capabilities due to new discoveries.

How does such a corporation stay on top of the constant need to innovate, and not get disrupted by an upstart?

My answer: Train the Intrapreneurs.
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The 10 New Trends in Corporate Innovation Management

Last year, we launched a program called the 1M/1M Incubator-in-a-Box. Part of its goal has been to stimulate corporate innovation and intrapreneurship. It has exposed us to a broad range of technology companies and their innovation goals, strategies, and processes. While most of what we have learned is confidential, I will synthesize some trends we’re seeing in this domain.

1. Culture Change: Most major technology companies recognize the fact that they have a certain amount of disadvantage when it comes to innovation. Cultures, as companies become larger, become stodgy and uninspiring. The more innovative talent ends up leaving for smaller companies, or to become entrepreneurs. One of the primary goals of a formal corporate innovation program is to generate excitement and create energy around the concept of innovation such that innovative talent stays.

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