Getting Bigger by Growing Smaller: A New Growth Model for Corporate America

Book description

Large, mature companies always become trapped at some point in the declining stages of what has become known as the corporate life cycle. Historically this barrier to continued growth has been, and is still, as unavoidable as death and taxes.

In Getting Bigger by Growing Smaller, Joel Shulman, a leading researcher on entrepreneurship, teams up with Thomas T. Stallkamp, one of the world's most effective executives, to introduce a powerful new growth model for corporate America (based on 4 years of research at Babson College and Harvard University) that can enable corporations to break through this barrier to growth by utilizing a new breakthrough business model called the Strategic Entrepreneurial Unit (SEU). Shulman and Stallkamp demonstrate how to build new employee/entrepreneur-led startups within the corporation--entities that can take on new market opportunities and deliver startup-level growth. This is the first book to provide practical methods for actually identifying, creating, and implementing smaller units within large organizations to enable continued, rapid growth beyond the predictable barriers of the corporate life cycle.

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. Financial Times Prentice Hall
  3. Financial Times Prentice Hall Books
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. Introduction
  6. 1. Grow Smarter or Die: The Formation of a Strategic Entrepreneurial Unit (SEU)
    1. The SEU: A New Model of Growth
    2. Why Corporate America Needs a New Growth Model
    3. What the SEU Needs to Succeed
    4. What the SEU Can Achieve
    5. Anatomy of an SEU
    6. The Traditional VC Model
    7. Short Term Is Out—Long Term is In
    8. A Fresh Perspective
    9. Large Companies Should Win
  7. 2. The Corporate Life Cycle: Why Can’t Businesses Grow Forever?
    1. Is Corporate Death Inevitable?
    2. Corporate Renewal Programs
    3. Corporate Life Cycle
    4. The Evidence
    5. How Big and Old Do Public Companies Get?
    6. Typical Profile of a Fortune 500 Company?
    7. Why Don’t Big Companies Grow Forever? Let’s Ask the Experts
    8. Extending the Life Cycle: A Few Cases in Point
    9. Company at Point “A”
    10. Company at Point “B”
    11. Company at Point “C”
    12. Company at Point “D”
    13. Company at Point “E”
    14. Creating a Template for Future Corporate Empires
  8. 3. What’s Wrong with the Current System? Compensation without Long-Term Value Creation
    1. High Compensation without Revenues—Now That’s a Problem
    2. Money Is Not Everything—But It’s Pretty Darn Important
    3. Whatever Goes Up...
    4. Return without Risk: Not Bad if You Can Get It
    5. Want Growth? Just Acquire It
    6. CEOs May Serve Themselves First
    7. Management by the Numbers: Executive Compensation and Shareholder Return
    8. Highest Paid = Highest Performance? A Look at Business Week’s Top 20
    9. CEO Influence: Examples of Style
    10. Lessons Learned?
    11. Do Senior Agents Represent Themselves More than Other Stakeholders?
    12. Incentive Orientation: Things Need to Change
  9. 4. Resistance to Change—Ways to Leverage the Concrete Middle
    1. Just Do It My Way and Don’t Ask Questions
    2. Inbred Management at Ford Purchasing
    3. The Problem of the Concrete Middle
    4. An Organized Resistance Campaign
    5. Problems with Culture: The Case at Chrysler/Daimler
    6. A Question of Culture
    7. Using the SEU to Overcome the Concrete Middle
  10. 5. Growth Models Need to Change
    1. The Race for Corporate Growth
    2. All Growth Is Not Equal
    3. High Growth: Does It Guarantee Fame and Fortune?
    4. Career Paths on the Fly: Action = Money
    5. Going Public—The Ultimate Harvest Vehicle?
    6. Ways to Grow—Complex Problems... So Little Time
    7. Why Acquire? Why Not?—It’s Fast
    8. Why Acquired Growth Doesn’t Work—Who Stays and Who Goes?
    9. Changing Goals and Culture Over Time: We Need a New Model of Growth
  11. 6. A New Growth Model
    1. Bureaucratic Companies Begin as Entrepreneurial Firms
    2. If Only They Had Stayed...
    3. Corporate America Needs to Capture the Growth of New Ventures
    4. From Spinouts to Corporate Venturing: Growth Models Past, Present, and Future
    5. Corporate Intrapreneurship
    6. Corporate Spinouts
    7. Corporate Venturing
    8. Corporate Venturing with Venture Capitalist Participation
    9. SEU
    10. SEUs: A Combination of Old Models with a New Twist
    11. Reverse SEU—The Start of Xerox
    12. Anatomy of an SEU: Getting Between 0 and 100%
    13. Facilitator—A VC without the Equity, Control, and Harvest Motivation Role of the Facilitator
    14. Compensation—Providing More than a Salary
    15. Equity Grants
    16. What If It Doesn’t Work?—Lifeline Back to Parent
    17. Harvest: The Key Driver in Most Deals
    18. Intellectual Property: Who Owns What?
    19. Financing: Expanding the Project Beyond the R&D Budget
    20. Board of Advisors: Who Drives the Direction?
    21. Summary and Rationale of SEU
    22. Summary
  12. 7. Implementing the SEU
    1. When to Use an SEU
      1. Technological Acquisition
      2. New Product/Market Access
      3. Cultural Change
    2. Steps in Implementing the SEU
    3. Selection of the Facilitator
    4. What Type of Company Could be a Facilitator?
    5. Responsibilities and Duties of the Facilitator
    6. The Facilitator in the SEU
    7. SEU Equity and Distribution
    8. New Venture Board
    9. Implementation Summary
  13. 8. Financing an SEU Venture
    1. Equation for Growth: Moving Big Company Risk Capital to SEU
    2. Combine Low-Cost Funds with High-Return Ventures
    3. Venture Financing Requires a “Portfolio Perspective”
    4. Diversification: Different Ways to Reduce Risk
    5. SEU Ventures Need to be Diversified by Year of Investment
    6. SEU Ventures Do Not Focus on Harvest
    7. SEU: Different Investment Orientation Focusing on Annual Return
    8. Big Firms Should Provide Risk Capital to Small Firms and Charge the Market Rate
    9. Large Companies Provide More than Just Cash—Catalysts for Growth
    10. Efficient Utilization Is More Important than Cost of Funds
    11. Perfect Fit: Small Firm Growth Orientation; Large Firm Resources
  14. 9. Liquidity versus Liquidation: Cashing Out of the SEU
    1. Harvest Without Selling
    2. Harvest Focuses Energy
    3. Financiers Need a “Harvest”
    4. Lessons Learned
    5. Value Creation Sometimes Takes Time
    6. SEUs Shift Orientation to an Owner’s Mindset
    7. Liquidity Is More Important than Harvest
    8. Liquidity with an SEU Couldn’t Be Easier
    9. Fewer Harvests Means Lower Fees and More Focused Energies
    10. Private to Public Conversion Creates Instant Value!
    11. SEU Value Does Not Depend on Appreciation of Parent’s Stock
    12. Slight Twist to an Old Approach
  15. 10. Where Do We Go from Here? Jumpstarting the Process of Change
    1. Conclusion

Product information

  • Title: Getting Bigger by Growing Smaller: A New Growth Model for Corporate America
  • Author(s): Joel M. Shulman, Thomas T. Stallkamp
  • Release date: October 2003
  • Publisher(s): Pearson
  • ISBN: 0130084220