Innovation and jobs conference

I just returned from a two-day intensive, called I4J, International Summit on Innovation for Jobs.  Hosted at SRI, initially sponsored by Vint Cerf, and supported by a veritable list of "who's who" in entrepreneurial circles, the group convened an 'invite-only' list of pundits, entrepreneurs, VCs, and government leaders to debate the issues of 'what's wrong' with the long-held assumption that innovation creates new jobs in unimaginable areas even as it destroys old jobs.  While that view is still held, the question facing the group was more subtle -- have we reached a place where the net job loss is higher than the gain, for maybe the first time in human history?

Without getting too far into that debate, the take-away for me -- for INTRAPRENEURING -- was simple.  Virtually every VC in attendance, and many serial entrepreneurs of very successful companies, said "THE PROBLEM IS" lack of management teams to carry fledgling companies to scale.  Managers at large companies, they all agree, lack the risk-taking skills and mentality, even though they can provide an exit path in terms of capital investment.  Entrepreneurial teams are GREAT at product or service innovation, but sorely lacking in how to build infrastructure and organization so that hundreds or thousands of people can work together to build a sizable enterprise.  And that great middle ground of innovative leadership seems to be missing.

Duh!!!

We've systematically shot 'em.  The folk who used to learn those skills, at companies like HP used to be, are grown up and retired.  The large companies we all admire -- IBM, P&G, Boeing, Motorola, Nike, Fedex, Qualcomm, Cisco, Intel -- have all quit growing, and have replaced their innovative leadership with MBAs and CPAs.

The newer companies have grown too fast, almost like the gawky fast-growth teenager who will be great at basketball when he figures out how to make his feet go in the same direction as his body.

Ummn, maybe that wasn't such a good analogy.  Sorry

But the point, for this group, was clear.  There is a missing link, and they're just now discoering that it is a big one, not just an incidental one.  I couldn't agree more.  It's called INTRAPRENEURING.