When The Mothership Doesn’t Want It

WHEN THE MOTHERSHIP DOESN’T WANT

RITA

You would think that after funding and supporting people to develop innovative new ideas, that the parent corporation would want to take advantage of launching them. Nope. Markets are full of concepts that didn’t fit the parent firm – either not consistent with their strategy or just too small.

THE XEROX PARC STORY

In their fascinating book, Fumbling the Future, Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander describe one of the most vivid examples of a company that saw critical inflection points coming, invested to make sure that they were ready, and then failed to make the bold move to benefit from what they had created. As is described in the documentary “Triumph of the Nerds,” Steve Jobs was ready to share the vision created at Xerox Parc.

CISCO, WEBEX AND ZOOM

A more recent story about an entrepreneur who had to leave the mothership behind is that of Eric Yuan and the creation of Zoom. Born and raised in China, Yuan reportedly was inspired to travel to America after hearing a 1994 speech by Bill Gates on this thing called the “internet.” In college, visits to his girlfriend involved grueling 10-hour train journeys, and he reportedly became intrigued at the idea of creating technology that would allow for virtual visits. He decided to move to Silicon Valley and applied for a visa. And applied. And applied. It wasn’t until his 9th try that he succeeded. He didn’t speak much English, but he did know how to code and in 1997 landed at WebEx, a startup in the videoconferencing space. WebEx grew rapidly, and was acquired by Cisco in 2007 for a price of $3.2 billion. Unfortunately, Cisco wasn’t interested in upgrading WebEx, and he left to found Zoom

O R P H A N I N V E N T I O N S

Of course, another reason that large companies don’t commercialize the inventions they fund is that the opportunity just isn’t material enough to make a difference to a multi-billion-dollar firm. Take the company Isoflux, which was founded by a Kodak scientist. It was based on novel technology, paid for and funded by Kodak, by David Glockner, with the permission of the parent firm!

Today, it is a thriving little business with around $5 million in revenue, and a great reputation in its niche of specialty coatings.

INNOVATION IS CUMULATIVE

These stories reflect the reality that breakthrough innovations are relatively rare, and are often the consequence of years of tinkering and cumulative creativity. This is a point that is made by both Matt Richtel in his book on creativity “Inspired” and by Safi Bahcall in his work on “Loonshots”. This is why the story of innovation progress is so difficult to unpack, as it is never a straight line from concept to market creating impact.

MEANWHILE, AT COLUMBIA AND VALIZE

Of course, and I’ve just finished directing my weeklong course at Columbia “Leading Strategic Growth and Change” in which we take a week to equip participants with the know-how to confidently pursue growth ventures and stare down uncertainty.

Our Valize SparcHub software has on boarded our first couple of beta clients. It’s intended to help you align your strategy, your budgets, your project governance and how people move through the system.