Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Why a consistent emphasis and approach for new business creation is beneficial but difficult to achieve
- I The business environment
- 3 The external business environment
- 4 The internal business environment
- II The management culture
- III The corporate executives
- IV The division general manager
- V The division and its top management team
- VI Putting it all together
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The internal business environment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Why a consistent emphasis and approach for new business creation is beneficial but difficult to achieve
- I The business environment
- 3 The external business environment
- 4 The internal business environment
- II The management culture
- III The corporate executives
- IV The division general manager
- V The division and its top management team
- VI Putting it all together
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Several factors in the internal business environment influence new business creation (Table 4.1).
The influence of the existing business
Existing business as a drag and a distraction that hurts new business creation
The demands of the existing business can take management's attention away from new business creation. As DGM Dan Stewart of Monsanto Fab Products said: “Well, certainly for the first year and a half, the ongoing business was a tremendous drag and took a lot of time. But once it was in good shape, it freed up time to get into new products.” Stu Little, VP&GM of the Systems SBU of Xerox OPD, explained why Xerox's existing copier business was a drag on OPD's ability to compete in the office automation race:
I think one of the things that was very, very difficult for Xerox — always had been — was that the copier business was one with tremendously long product cycles, and tremendously high demands for end-user customer support, but very big profit margins. And you had a lot of time to make changes, and you could afford to be very logistics conscious in terms of what you did. That was the way it was determined that we would run the Xerox Corporation for quite a little while. And that wasn't a bad way to run it then, when it was an oligarchy. But you can't use that kind of scheme in the fast-paced, highly competitive office automation business. And yet, the industry culture didn't allow Xerox to change very easily. These things have natural roots and it's not hard to understand why that industry culture pre-existed. And it's also not hard to understand why it was terrible baggage in the office automation business.
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- Corporate EntrepreneurshipTop Managers and New Business Creation, pp. 54 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003