394 ENTREPRENEURSHIP
vehicle for drumming up support and building a coalition is the business plan. We
described an entrepreneur’s business plan in Chapter 5. The major differences between
an intrapreneurial business plan and an entrepreneurial one are:- The intrapreneurial plan does not have an ownership section detailing the condi-
tions and requirements for selling shares because the corporation owns the ven-
ture—unless the proposal calls for a spin-off or a joint venture with another com-
pany. - The intrapreneurial plan does not seek outside financing. However, it does need to
meet the corporation’s internal financing and capital-budgeting criteria. - The intrapreneurial plan needs a section to describe the relationship (strategic, op-
erational, financial, and marketing) between the corporation and the internal
corporate venture.
The business plan helps the intrapreneur find a sponsor or set of sponsors who can
help get resources and pave the way for political acceptance. This is crucial, because cor-
porate managers and the bureaucracy often see these internal corporate ventures
(ICVs) as threats to the current power structure and to the resource allocation process.
Also, the sponsor will keep the intrapreneur objective about the prospects for success
and failure. It is easy to lose objectivity when caught up in the excitement of creative
innovation.
Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of computer publisher O’Reilly Media, says that the
“architecture of participation” must be compelling to ensure coalition building. The
Rite-Solutions stock market model described above make this architecture (buy-in) both
professional and fun. With each employee getting $10,000 in opinion money to invest
in ideas, employees can signal their favorites, share their enthusiasm, and best of all,
indicate where they will be willing to volunteer their efforts. Volunteers get stock in the
idea, which can have a real monetary payoff if the stock proposal becomes a profitable
product.^33
Resource Mobilization. Stage 3 calls for resource mobilization. The intrapreneur is
looking for the same types of resources as the entrepreneur: physical, technological,
financial, organizational, human, and reputational. To succeed, an internal corporate
venture must be rare, valuable, imperfectly imitable, and without desirable substitutes.
In the early stages of resource acquisition, the intrapreneur may be “borrowing”
resources officially assigned to others in the corporation. As the project gains momen-
tum and resource needs mount, the ICV needs official formal recognition. This will be
given when the ICV passes the test of the corporation’s internal capital market and
receives its official budget.
One way to mobilize resources early in the process is to create a skunk works, an
autonomous group with a mandate to find and develop new products outside the com-
pany’s core competence.^34 One of the prime benefits of the skunk works is that it takes
the development of the new venture out of the traditional corporate bureaucracy, gov-
ernance structure, and decision-making process. The independence of the skunk works
insulates it from company politics and from the sunk-cost thinking of incumbent man-
agers.