Expert Cherry-Picking Needed To Grow Your New Business
As a serial intrapreneur/corporate entrepreneur, I came to realize that to successfully build a new business from within an existing company, one must assemble the best team possible. One might think that intrapreneurs have the advantage of being able to tap into well-known talent pools from within the parent organization. This is true to some degree, but be careful: relying solely on internal employees to build your new company has some benefits that can also carry some liabilities.
In my experience, for a corporate start-up to succeed, the intrapreneur must assemble a well-balanced team composed of individuals who bring specific talents that are required to drive growth. Thinking that the best people for the job can all come from within your parent organization is a mistake, and believing that a “good enough” internal candidate can learn these skills on the fly, or easily master them, are both assumptions that can cost you dearly. One of the benefits of having worked in different sectors is the realization that
. The intrapreneur must understand where to look to find the best talent to execute the strategy.
Here are four recommendations to consider:
Placement & Promotion = Big pharma: To date, the most talented marketing placement and promotion leaders that I have worked with have come from large pharmaceutical companies. Companies in this sector spend a lot of money and effort to ensure that their marketing activities have the desired impact and drive brand awareness and demand. Consider cherry-picking from this sector if your new start-up’s growth strategy is heavily reliant on effective placement and promotion.
Social media = Web-based businesses: I have found that people who have worked in companies with a business model that is heavily dependent on web traffic have the best understanding of how to effectively leverage the different types of social media to achieve specific results and drive website traffic. This is where you need to cherry-pick your social media leader if your start-up can benefit from an active social media campaign.
Operational efficiency = Aviation & transportation: These industries have become so cost competitive that the companies who survive are those that can create an internal climate of continuous process improvement. For this reason, they put a lot of effort and training into understanding how to best achieve cost savings through operational efficiency initiatives and how to clearly define effective measures of performance and metrics. Cherry-pick from these industries if your start-up will require effective and highly cost-sensitive systems and processes to deliver its new products.
Product development = Software and smartphone industry: The very nature of these industries is to regularly release new versions and updates to their products to keep pace with the competition and the evolving needs of its users. Their product development expertise enables them to capture user needs, create well-researched product roadmaps, and make regular product releases that anticipate future needs. Your product development leader should likely be cherry-picked from these sectors if you are launching a new software or hardware product that will evolve on a regular basis.
Learning which industry can provide the talent pool from which you can cherry-pick your next functional leader is an important skill to succeed at launching new businesses from within a corporation.