Building Breakthrough Businesses in Established Companies (HBR OnPoint Collection)

Launching the breakthrough innovations you need to stay competitive while protecting your established businesses isn't easy. New ventures face stiff headwinds in their effort to sail alongside old businesses. In some companies, resentment from managers in the established business torpedoes the innovation. In others, the venture's leaders adopt a business model that suited the old business perfectly but derails the new. In still others, leaders entrust the innovation to an ad hoc cross-functional team operating within the established business when it needs a dedicated team working in a spin-off organization. Careless choices about these matters can kill your venture, as toy and gaming giant Hasbro discovered first-hand. Just five years after launching a software division, shabby performance forced Hasbro to unload the division at a rock-bottom price. This Harvard Business Review OnPoint collection provides guidelines for avoiding Hasbro's fate, including how to decide which resources your venture should borrow from your established business, what kind of team should develop your innovation, and who should govern your new business. The three Harvard Business Review articles in this collection: "Building Breakthrough Businesses in Established Organizations" (HBR reprint R0505C) by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble; "Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change" (HBR reprint R00202) by Clayton Christensen and Michael Overdorf; and "The Ambidextrous Organization" by Charles A. O'Reilly III and Michael L. Tushman (HBR reprint R0404D).