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

Taking On The Big Guys: Chrome River Co-Founder and COO Dave Terry (Part 5)

Dave Terry: The company had been growing at a really nice growth rate. I think at that point we were in the Inc. 500 list two or three years in a row. We were really funding things out of profits but we had a few investors calling us constantly. We thought that we can keep growing in the self-funded mode, but maybe we should bring in some additional capital. In May of 2012, we decided to take our first round of outside investment. We took $3 million.

Sramana Mitra: What was the revenue at that point?

Dave Terry: We probably shouldn’t say.

Sramana Mitra: If you’re on Inc. 500, that information must have been public.

Dave Terry: Yes. I think we were probably in the order of $5 million to $7 million recurring. >>>

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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