Innovation in the Information Age, Part Two—The Intra-venture:
(This dialogue string began with tip 6/21/99)
The cycle for a mature business model in the century just passing was perhaps
2-8 years; the internet economy wave-phase is perhaps 9-12 months and
shrinking. How can large corporations with standard ways of doing business
and employees that are entrenched in “the way we do it” compete against the
20-somethings bucking & waving their hats in the dot.com IPO rodeo?
If you are thinking of creating a venture unit or enterprise division within
your organization—called an “intraventure”—, here are some tips that were
tossed around at the Ebusiness conference (CMP) last week in San Jose:
1. strive to evolve a different form of leadership within the intraventure—a
start-up mentality needs to live within a corporation without being
cannibalized by it
2. find a Venture Sponsor in your organization high enough up in the
hierarchy to have solid support from the top
3. create a Venture Board of outsiders to assist in crafting new models and
ideas for your intraventure; you’ll need functional expertise and experience
to guide the formation of your new venture group
4. the intraventure start-up must be allowed to manage in opposition to
corporate strategy if necessary—it may need to establish its own “bottomline”
management parameters outside the existing corporate goals
5. resources used in this venture must be viewed as investment as opposed to
budget allocations against milestones
Next week we’ll continue our discussion of intraventures and look at views
that oppose the intraventure model
