Page 217 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

middle, and end to 1I effort. Or the higher-ups use the 101
group as a place to park good company soldiers who are CREATIVE
temporarily out of a job, but whom the company doesn't PROBLEM
want to lose. Over time, the big boys' attention shifts else- SOLVINC
where, and whatever the supposedly special team ends TECHNIQUI
up recommending somehow gets lost.
201
•The task force as a setup. Ambitious Executive So-and-

So hatches a devilishly clever initiative to hitch her star to.
But to secure top management's approval, she needs evi-
dence that her idea has merit. So she charters a task force,
allegedly to study the problem for which she already has
the solution. The possible rub: If the group is free to make
up its own mind, it just may recommend a different solu-
tion, which she will have to accept—hmmm—or bury, to
widespread dismay. On the other hand, if she railroads
her own idea through, bright underlings may at some point
divine that they have been had.

•The ambassador syndrome. This is a high-tech variant

of the dummy task force, identified by Gifford Pinchot
a consultant and the author of Intrapreneuring, a treatise
on how to promote entrepreneurship within a large cor-
poration. The brass get hip to the trendy notion that to
develop a workable new product quickly, they will have
to "tear down the walls between departments." They
form a team with representatives from marketing, manu-
facturing, all the major corporate functions. But instead
of giving team members real power to innovate, the de-
partments merely send ambassadors, who must check
back with their bosses before committing to anything.

• Rock-hard controls. "It's surprisingly tough to simplify

control systems," Pinchot finds. Yes, we want innovation,
the company says, but you still have to get the usual four-
teen approvals for any initiative.

•The business-of-a-certain-size ploy. This goes beyond

that sure-fire innovation stopper long favored by the brass-.
"We are a big company; we only want to look at opportu-
nities that will have sales of a couple hundred million

CONTINUES ON PAGE 202