Corporate Explorer

3Strategic Ambition

Corporate Explorers have our admiration for taking on the hard task of creating new businesses inside existing organizations. They are ambitious, purpose-driven managers willing to agitate for disruptive new businesses from within stable, successful organizations. Krisztian Kurtisz challenged the traditional insurance industry model, offering a digital channel that improves customer experience and slashes cost. Balaji Bondili at Deloitte is aiming to upend the hundred-year-old management consulting model of full-time consultants operating on client premises. Jim Peck at LexisNexis introduced a technology-led model for business insight that was a first of a kind. These are leaders challenging the basic rules of the business of which they are a part. Most do this from a position of weakness; they have no revenue or customer base. They are a cost to the company. They trade not on fact, but on the belief that they can create something new. This is a lonely position to occupy. Many Corporate Explorers have no peers inside the company and, at least at first, most have no team.

It is the CEO that usually puts them in this position, perhaps not personally, but at least by initiating a growth strategy or innovation aspiration that gets them started. Having put them in the role, what can senior leaders do to help make the Corporate Explorer successful? In this chapter we will focus on what CEOs and other senior managers can do to support new ventures. Specifically, ...