Faced with the choice
of starting a company or joining a large corporation, Steve Jobs believed that
it was 'more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy'. But for innovators
inside established companies, making a distinction between being a pirate and joining the navy is a fallacy. We have to figure out a way to become pirates in the navy!
There is nothing
harder in business than trying to innovate within large corporations.
Innovators in big companies often face internal opposition as well as their external
competitors. It is the management of the core business that tends to get in the
way of innovation. Most intrapreneurs recognise that innovation can’t be carried out as a series of one-off projects that always have to jump through
political hurdles. They realise that there is a need for innovation to happen
as a repeatable process. But how can they achieve this?
This is a step-by-step
guide to getting continuous innovation done in companies and reshaping them in the process. It is for anyone involved in corporate innovation and driving
company change.