Harvard Business Review on Succeeding as an Entrepreneur

Meeting the Challenge of Corporate Entrepreneurship

by David A. Garvin and Lynne C. Levesque

FOR LARGE COMPANIES, creating new businesses is the challenge of the day. After years of downsizing and cost cutting, corporations have realized that they can’t shrink their way to success. They’ve also found that they can’t grow rapidly by tweaking existing offerings, taking over rivals, or moving into developing countries. Because of maturing technologies and aging product portfolios, a new imperative is clear: Companies must create, develop, and sustain innovative new businesses. They must become Janus-like, looking in two directions at once, with one face focused on the old and the other seeking out the new.

Corporate entrepreneurship is, however, ...