7. Innovative Cultures

SINCE THE STARTUP CORPORATION lives within an established organization, the management of that organization has important implications for the success of strategic discoveries. The following chapters examine the aspects of established organizations that influence the Startup Corporation. We refer to them as the foundations, which encompass the soft aspects of culture and leadership as well as the hard aspects—strategy, incentives, and management systems. In this chapter, we focus on culture (table 7.1).

Culture can be the fertile soil that nurtures developing ideas, or it can be the hard ground that thwarts them before they have a chance to grow. Take, for example, a large Silicon Valley– based company in the software industry ...

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