I was recently asked to deliver a keynote talk at the Intrapreneurship Conference in Silicon Valley last November. The conference organizers kindly asked me to cover the leading trends in the field of Intrapreneurship, also known as Corporate Entrepreneurship. To do the task justice, I sent out a wide survey and also interviewed a dozen clients as well as multi-industry
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I recently caught up with SnapBizz co-founder, Yash Prakash to hear his amazing story of transitioning an idea originating in a corporation to a thriving startup. The promising beginning When Qualcomm started its VentureFest intra-preneurship program back in 2006 (now called ImpaQt), it unlocked the floodgates of leadership, creativity and innovation from unexpected places and people. While running the program, I
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In a previous blog post, I wrote about the value large corporations could excerpt from partnering with startups. Here, I discuss the converse, the value in partnering with large corporations from the startups perspective. Startups are rightly pursuing relationships with large corporations, usually knocking on the corporate venture capital (CVC) or open innovation office (OIO) doors. That’s the easy part –
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Stumbled upon a quote by Peter Thiel about the motivation to start a company (or a new business within an established company, for that matter). “…You don’t start a company for the sake of starting a company. The good reason to start a company is because it’s the best way to solve some important problem that would otherwise not get
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In my previous blog post, I discussed the common fatal flaws in business plan or startup competition pitches. This essay focuses on the reverse concern – do you have any salient virtues? To illustrate the point, I encourage you to watch the SNL classic skit featuring Christopher Walken and Will Ferrell “More Cowbell” – also see the Wikipedia entry. The main
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In Part I of this blog, I introduced the age-old secret of entrepreneurship – understanding the essence of what you’re really selling, i.e. defining the intrinsic quality of your product or service that compels your customers to want it. This is also referred to as the ‘value proposition’ or ‘deep meaning’ of any particular offering, elucidating the reason ‘why’ someone
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My first ever (ad)venture was selling books door-to-door. Back during my college years at LSU, I badly needed to make money during the summer breaks to pay for the mounting costs of a higher education (and too much partying). Little did I know that my summer job was to be the real education – my door-to-door sales experience is where
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If there were ever a mythological role model of entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship, it would definitely be Prometheus. Prometheus is the trickster Titan that created man and woman from clay. He is best known for defiantly stealing fire from the Olympian God Zeus and gifting it to his beloved mankind, for which he was condemned to eternal suffering; The irate Zeus
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University of Virginia Darden professor Saras Sarasvathy’s groundbreaking 2001 paper “What Makes Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurial” finally gained some widespread recognition when Vinod Khosla posted a copy on his website with some personal notes, one of which read: “First good paper I’ve seen”. Professor Sarasvathy developed the Effectuation theory of entrepreneurship after exhaustively interviewing 27 serial entrepreneurs. Her research findings greatly advanced
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Companies realize that they don’t innovate – their employees innovate. Companies are thus earnestly preaching: ‘Innovation is everyone’s job”! While the employees themselves want to become more innovative and entrepreneurial, they face five major structural inhibitors in attempting to do so (that only the most gifted, networked and experienced corporate entrepreneurs can overcome – unfortunately, there aren’t enough of them
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Necrophone 