Army of Entrepreneurs

CHAPTER 3Thinking Entrepreneurially—Even If You’re a Big Company

I ONCE SHARED A PANEL DAIS WITH ONE OF THE MOVERS AND shakers of the Internet economy. He was the genius behind one of the most successful web-based ad networks and had founded and launched half a dozen different Internet ventures. But he wasn’t always a lone ranger and he reached back into his history to tell us a story, a classic mistake big companies make when they encounter a new idea.

It was back before his ad network days, when he was a senior vice president at an established old media company that was big and growing bigger. Our speaker was excited to be part of the colossus and was instrumental in a restructuring effort that helped increase the firm’s profits. But he was ...