Andrew Binns - Corporate Explorer: How Corporations Beat Startups at the Innovation Game

1. Chapter 5
2. Chapter 6
3. Chapter 7
4. Chapter 11
5. Chapter 12

1. Section I
2. Chapter 3
3. Section II
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Section III
8. Chapter 7
9. Chapter 8
10. Section IV
11. Chapter 12
12. Appendix

ANDREW BINNS
CHARLES O'REILLY
MICHAEL TUSHMAN

Copyright 2022 by Andrew Binns, Charles O'Reilly, and Michael Tushman. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Binns, Andrew (Managing principal), author. | OReilly, Charles A., author. | Tushman, Michael, author.

Title: Corporate explorer : how corporations beat startups at the innovation game / Andrew Binns, Charles A OReilly, and Michael Tushman.

Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : Wiley, [2022] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021046905 (print) | LCCN 2021046906 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119838326 (cloth) | ISBN 9781119838340 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119838333 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Technological innovations. | Creative ability in business. | Corporations. | New business enterprises.

Classification: LCC T173.8 .B56 2022 (print) | LCC T173.8 (ebook) | DDC 338/.064dc23/eng/20211004

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021046905
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021046906

Cover Design: Wiley

For Tristan, Gethin, and ClaryYou have lived this book as much as me; without your love and support it would never have been possible.

Andy

To all the Corporate Explorers in this book and elsewhere who have helped us understand the challenges they face.

Charles

For Marjorie Rose and the light she shines on me and her world.

Michael

Corporate Explorer is a book 20 years in the making. It started when I (Andy) attended an IBM Strategic Leadership Forum at Harvard Business School led by Professor Michael Tushman and Professor Charles O'Reilly. Mike and Charles were engaged to support IBM's Emerging Business Opportunity (EBO) program. I had just joined IBM from McKinsey and was assigned as an internal consultant charged with supporting these nascent businesses.

One of the leaders we worked with was Carol Kovac, then general manager for IBM Life Sciences, and our archetypal Corporate Explorer. In just five years, Carol, Jamie Coffin, and the team created something remarkable: a new multibillion-dollar business inside a corporate behemoth. Living this story, I was blessed with the opportunity to learn first-hand what it took to succeed. This has forever shaped my belief that it is possible for corporates to beat startups at innovation, even if I also learned it would not be simple.

The IBM experience was core to Mike and Charles's popular book Lead and Disrupt: How to Solve the Innovator's Dilemma. They describe how IBM and other corporates successfully (and unsuccessfully) ideate, incubate, and scale new ventures. Their book makes a powerful case for an ambidextrous organization that can manage businesses at multiple stages of maturity some driving operational effectiveness in the core business, while others explore new potential opportunities in the way IBM did in the EBOs.

In parallel to this, corporate innovation has become something of an industry as more and more companies invest in accelerators and labs. A global innovation industry has developed mostly focused on innovation tools, techniques, and methodologies. Many of these are excellent. We have great respect for Tom and David Kelly's work on design thinking, Steve Blank and Eric Ries on lean startup, as well as the vital difference made by the agile software development movement and its focus on teaching corporations a new way of working.

Even so, two things were missing. First, most innovation methodologies make very little distinction between innovating as a startup and doing so from within a corporation. That is a big gap. Managing innovation in the context of working in a corporation is fundamental to its success. Second, there is a presumption that the leader of corporate innovation is a facsimile of a startup entrepreneur. They share much in common, but these are completely different roles. A Corporate Explorer must translate methodologies designed for one context and try to make them work for theirs.

Out of these insights came the notion of a book focused on the individual Corporate Explorer. These are people who do what others say is impossible: lead disruptive innovations from inside large corporations. Sometimes, they do not get assigned to this role, other times they start the ball rolling themselves. In all cases, Corporate Explorers see an opportunity, build support for action to capture it, and make it happen. They do not wait for permission; they mobilize others into action. That is leadership.