Pirates In The Navy

A Thinkers50 title: a fresh, practical, step-by-step guide to carrying out innovation in large companies

Faced with the choice of starting a company or joining a large corporation, Steve Jobs believed that it was 'more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy'. But for innovators inside established companies, making a distinction between being a pirate and joining the navy is a fallacy. We have to figure out a way to become pirates in the navy!

There is nothing harder in business than trying to innovate within large corporations. Innovators in big companies often face internal opposition as well as their external competitors. It is the management of the core business that tends to get in the way of innovation. Most intrapreneurs recognise that innovation can’t be carried out as a series of one-off projects that always have to jump through political hurdles. They realise that there is a need for innovation to happen as a repeatable process. But how can they achieve this?

This is a step-by-step guide to getting continuous innovation done in companies and reshaping them in the process. It is for anyone involved in corporate innovation and driving company change.