| | By Mick James
With 2011 shaping up
to be another tough year,
the question on
everyone’s lips is where
is the growth going to
come from that will
rebalance both the books
and the economy?
For Founder and
Director of
Market Gravity Gideon
Hyde the answer is
clear—reawakening the
thirst for corporate
entrepreneurialism that
lies dormant in our large
organisations. Promoting
this idea has led to the
production of a “business
novel,” Defying Gravity:
the adventures of a
corporate entrepreneur,
as well as the
sponsorship of the UK’s
first awards for
corporate
entrepreneurship last
year. The awards had the
effect of flushing out
corporate entrepreneurs
from a number of
organisations, including
Transport for London
which carried off the
award for the successful
launch of Barclays Cycle
Hire, otherwise known as
the “Boris bikes.”
“We thought we’d try
to hold a mirror up to
the industry and invite
them to come forward so
we could recognise their
achievement in developing
and delivering growth in
their industries,”
explains Hyde. “After the
awards we could clearly
see that the things we
were doing were tapping
into something real.”
Hyde is very clear
that their “agenda is
growth”—Market Gravity
isn’t an ideas shop or an
innovation factory.
Innovation within
companies comes in a
number of forms—some are
known for it culturally,
others take more behind-
the-scenes approach, some
systematize it and still
others are more “let a
thousand flowers bloom.”
By focusing on
entrepreneurialism, the
firm felt it was better
placed to help good ideas
to become reality. One
example was working with
British Gas over its
micro-generation
offering:
“That wasn’t
innovative per se, but it
needed an entrepreneurial
approach,” says Hyde. “It
wasn’t a breakthrough
piece of thinking but it
was difficult to do,
difficult to organise how
to get the kit into
people’s homes and to
make money out of it.”
Hyde sees the
combination of creativity
and delivery as the key
to facilitating
entrepreneurship:
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“It’s the ability to
go from a blank piece of
paper to the early stages
of a business,” he says.
This will often include
staying on in the
business post-launch in
an interim role: “There’s
nothing like actually
delivering a business
plan to help you realise
the pitfalls.”
By taking an overview
of the entire lifecycle,
Hyde believes he can help
organisations overcome
some of the bottlenecks
and pitfalls involved in
setting up corporate
ventures.
“The challenge is how
to bring out the
organisation’s collective
knowledge and insight—not
just those people who
happen to be in the
room,” he says. “You need
to start with a broad
spectrum of ideas and
opportunities, so that
you’re confident that
you’ve done everything
you can to identify
potential ideas,” he
says. “Then you drill
down to a dozen big
opportunities to focus
on, and then look at what
you can do near term.”
This process should
lead to one or two “super
business cases,” each of
which can be pursued in
the confidence that they
are the best of all the
opportunities on offer.
Where most companies fail
is that they start off
with too narrow a range
of initial ideas and go
straight to launch, or
they fail to qualify the
ideas and get bogged down
in a cycle of endless
pilot schemes.
“The idea is that
after working with us you
will have a growth
pipeline that is
completely validated and
based on informed data,
not guesswork,” says
Hyde. “We can’t guarantee
success but we can take
away a lot of the risk
without undermining the
opportunity.”
By taking this
step-by-step approach,
the journey looks a lot
less like climbing a
sheer rock face—with lots
of opportunities to fall
off.
“If you go along that
journey not only is the
risk lowered, but it
allows you to get to
places which are
inherently beneficial to
the organisation even if
you don’t proceed any
further.”
In the book Hyde talks
about “venture death” and
the “naysayers and
assassins” who can derail
the corporate
entrepreneur:
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“The biggest hurdle to
growth in an organisation
is cultural; it’s not a
lack of desire or a lack
of clever people,” he
says. “Often the parent
organisation wants to
impose its own governance
structures onto the new
venture, but a venture is
inherently more
risky—there are different
expectations, different
performance measures, a
different need for
flexibility.”
This means that
managing corporate
entrepreneurship requires
strong leadership as well
as emotional
intelligence:
“You need people who
will go to bat for the
venture and you need to
handle egos and also be
very politically savvy,”
says Hyde. “When you pick
the core team, you are
looking for people who
are not just motivated by
money, you want to pick
the people who are a
little bit frustrated,
who want to create
something new they can
put on their CV and be
proud of it.”
For its part Market
Gravity is also looking
for people to fuel its
growth, which Hyde says
has recently gone
“gangbusters” with the
final quarter in 2010
outpacing the rest of the
year. Currently basking
in a market presence that
belies its size, the
company hopes to move
from 10 full-time
consultants to 20 or 25
by the end of the year.
“What we like are
people who’ve either got
a consultancy background
or do big, interesting
things in industry as
programme managers,
who’ve seen projects
through from start to
finish, so they know what
it’s about,” says Hyde.
“The most important thing
is attitude; we’re not
looking for eggheads but
for people who can work
with people on a day to
day level.”
So is 2011 the year
for corporate
entrepreneurship to
really take off?
“There’s only so much
efficiency you can eke
out of an organisation,”
says Hyde. “The FTSE 100
companies have made some
saving but they can’t cut
any more people and they
can’t keep on finding
more savings. The way we
approach it is to look at
the market as a whole and
identify the growth
potential for their
business.” | |
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