如何把内部创业从神话变为现实

    十几年来，很多管理者一直梦想着能在大公司中引入颠覆性创新者的创收能力。近些年，这种对创业者的崇拜更是达到了新的高峰。

    很多商业书籍都号称能教会企业高层打造创新文化，培育出谢尔盖•布林、马克•扎克伯格、史蒂夫•乔布斯这样富有远见卓识的人才。9月份的《哈佛商业评论》（Harvard Business Review）即将引爆一枚思想炸弹，刊登一篇题为《新车库创新时代》（The New Corporate Garage）的文章，宣步一个新创新时代的到来：它具有“个人创业”的特征，同时背靠大公司的资源和规模，却又不失初创企业的灵活。

    如今，海外竞争对手日益壮大、科技变革加速，在这样的背景下，美国《财富》100强公司的高管们都希望从一些颠覆性的想法中寻找突破，这一点并不为怪。随着一波接一波的新兴企业成功挑战大公司的市场主导地位，大公司自然也会有些担心。收购好斗的竞争对手从来不乏失败的案例，其中任何一个案例都表明，收购创意引擎存在挑战。另外，为了吸引最有才华的年轻人，大企业还需要战胜这些年轻人心中成为下一个乔布斯或扎克伯格的梦想。

    “几乎每位管理者都认识到市场变化迅速，循规蹈矩地经营已经不够。除了长于经营，还必须勇于创新，必须要有与众不同的想法，必须开创新的业务，”创新公司Innosight的董事总经理、上述《新创新时代》一文的作者斯科特•安东尼说。

    但在一家大公司内部做一个创业者，是不是有些矛盾？那些宣称将培育创业精神的人们到底是在鼓励寻常的创意思维，还是鼓动性的销售说辞？（倒不是说这有什么错。）即便是巴布森学院（Babson College）——布兰克创业中心（Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship）所在地——的院长也承认，很多围绕所谓“内部创业”的说辞都是雷声大、雨点小。

    “有些CEO甚至喊出了‘我们希望30万名员工人人都是创业者’这样的口号，完全是胡扯，”巴布森学院院长、《开始吧》（Just Start）一书的作者林恩•施莱辛格说。“现实情况是，你是在要求人们做出一些现有环境本质上非常排斥的行为。”

    培育创业文化的挑战和成功几率几乎堪比打造一家成功的初创公司，大多数初创公司都活不过4年。不可能像洛克希德•马丁（Lockheed Martin）传奇的创新机构“臭鼬工厂”（Skunk Works）那样把创新者隔离开来：虽然这样能保护他们不受现有官僚文化的侵蚀，但同时也阻止了他们获取所在大公司的资源，这是他们相比灵活的独立初创公司原本应该具有的优势。另外，也不能期待每位员工都孜孜不倦地寻找下一个大目标——大多数人必须将重点放在日常生产上。

    “走极端很危险，”安东尼说。“必须不偏不倚，找到一条中间道路，想办法有选择地、深思熟虑地借助能给予你优势的、真真切切的长处。”

    那么，如何将说辞与现实区分开来呢？专家们各持己见，但大多数人同意，要想培育真正的创业精神，管理者必须采取以下四步。

接受冒险和失败

    在很多公司，员工都是“稳”字当头，因为他们知道，失败一次就足以报销整个职业生涯。显然，在教育巨头培生（Pearson）公司中情况不是这样，培生CEO 马乔里•斯卡迪诺要求员工“要勇敢、富于想象力，而且要出色”。2008年，时任高级副总裁的帕特里克•苏潘克在和斯卡迪诺一起候机时说，他非常担心培生在利用一些教育科技新机会方面行动不够快。三个月后，斯卡迪诺就要求苏潘克提交拓展这一未知领域的方案。培生批准了一批种子资金。2010年，培生成立了教育软件公司Alleyoop，与一系列内容提供商（包括一些培生的竞争对手）合作，帮助青少年为未来的大学生活做好准备。

    Alleyoop是培生一个独立的部门，它由苏潘克任总裁，向由培生高管组成的一个委员会汇报。“这是一个冒险的举动，”他说。“如果企业希望培育创业精神，它们需要在员工经历一系列失败的过程中实实在在地给予他们自主权、时间和支持”。

    For over a decade, the promise of bringing the revenue-driving ability of disruptive innovators into a large corporation has tempted many a business leader. But in recent years, the cult of the entrepreneur has reached new heights.

    Plenty of business books purport to teach top management how to create a culture that nurtures visionaries like Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs. A "Big Idea" article set to be published in September's Harvard Business Review heralds the dawning of a new age of innovation marked by individual "catalysts" that leverage the resources and reach of a large enterprise without losing the nimble agility of a startup.

    It's no surprise that Fortune 100 leaders are looking for a game-changing concept to offer hope in the face of ever-escalating competition from overseas rivals and the pace of technological change. With wave after wave of entrepreneurial ventures successfully challenging corporate titans for market dominance, the establishment is right to be afraid. Any of the number of failed acquisitions of scrappy competitors demonstrates that buying the creative engine brings its own challenges. Moreover, to attract the most talented young people entering the workforce, big business needs to compete with the dream of becoming the next Jobs or Zuckerberg.

    "Just about every leader recognizes that the pace of change in markets means that business as usual isn't enough. It's not enough to be a great operator, you have to be innovative, you have to think differently, you have to give birth to new businesses," says Scott Anthony, managing director for innovation boutique Innosight, and author of the forthcoming Harvard Business Review article, "The New Corporate Garage."

    But isn't it a contradiction in terms to be an entrepreneur within a large corporation? Are those who claim to be instilling entrepreneurialism merely encouraging garden-variety creative thinking or even just a killer sales mentality? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Even the president of Babson College, home of the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, acknowledges that much of the rhetoric around so-called intrapreneurs promises more than it delivers.

    "Some CEOs go so far as to say, 'We want all of our 300,000 employees to be entrepreneurs.' It is just complete nonsense," says Len Schlesinger, Babson's president and author of Just Start. "The reality is that you're asking people to display a set of behaviors in an environment that, by its very nature, tends to be very hostile to those activities."

    Cultivating an entrepreneurial culture is almost as challenging -- and rare -- as launching a successful startup company, the majority of which won't see their fourth birthday. You can't simply wall off the innovators, as in Lockheed Martin's (LMT) legendary "Skunk Works," because by protecting them from being corrupted by the operational, bureaucratic culture, you also block them from the large-company resources that would give them an advantage over nimble independents. Nor can you reasonably expect that every worker will be constantly on the hunt for the next big thing -- the majority will need to focus on routine production.

    "The extremes are dangerous," Anthony says. "You have to strike a very careful medium where you find ways to very selectively and thoughtfully borrow the true capabilities that will give you advantages ... without corrupting either side."

    So how do you separate rhetoric from reality? Experts differ, but most agree that to have any hope of cultivating true entrepreneurship, leaders must take these four steps.

Make risk-taking, and failure, acceptable

    In many companies, employees play it safe because they know a single failure can end a career. Not so, apparently, at education giant Pearson (PSO), where CEO Marjorie Scardino urges employees "to be brave, imaginative and decent." In 2008, then-senior vice president Patrick Supanc found himself worrying out loud to Scardino as they waited together at an airport that Pearson wasn't moving quickly enough to exploit some new opportunities in educational technology. Three months later, Scardino asked him to prepare a pitch on the unknown territory he'd like to chart. The company approved seed funding and in 2010 Pearson launched Alleyoop, an educational software company that prepares teens for college in partnership with a range of content providers -- some Pearson competitors.

    Alleyoop is an independent division of Pearson, with Supanc as president, reporting to a board comprised of top Pearson executives. "This was a risky move," he says. "If corporations want to foster entrepreneurship, they really need to commit to the autonomy and the time and the willingness to support folks as they move through a series of failures."