Being an entrepreneur is not a part-time job.  People who try starting businesses "between jobs" rarely succeed.  It takes time, resources, careful listening to the marketplace and adroit adaptability to emerging needs to be a successful entrepreneur.  But, as Harvard Business Review points out in "The Danger of Part Time Business Builders" too often existing companies relegate new business development to a part-time activity.

That's why creating and maintaining White Space is the 4th step of The Phoenix Principle.  When you have a scenario plan, and you know how you will effectively compete you attack Lock-in to open doors for doing something new – and then you dedicate resources to doing the new thing.  Growth requires dedicated resources.  One of the biggest reasons new projects fail is we expect them to get done using 15% of Frank in finance, 20% of Rebecca in real estate, 30% of Michelle in marketing, etc.  Even if Larry is a dedicated leader for the growth project, how can he hope to succeed when most of the time the people on his project have their heads into doing more to manage or improve the existing Success Formula!

The majority of innovation at Proctor & Gamble is variations and derivatives, designed to Defend & Extend an old brand.  Sustaining innovations meant to maintain revenues, or grow them slightly.  A traditional, large organization is usually pretty good at that activity – as exemplified at places like Kraft and P&G.  But these same organizations usually fail when it comes to entering new businesses because they try to "matrix" the resources for start-up; "leveraging" existing staff.  These ad hoc teams, even as a task force, aren't able to really listen to new, emerging customers or challenge old Success Formula Lock-ins – so they almost always spend money, produce mediocre (at best) results and simply drift into oblivion.

Harvard Business Review discusses how P&G succeeded by using White Space in "How P&G Quietly Launched a Disruptive Innovation." By dedicating people to the project, and allowing them to violate previous Lock-ins, the Align Probiotic product team was able to identify new customers, cater to their needs, and build a solid business.  Initially P&G used a traditional approach, and almost killed the product.  But when a far-sighted leader decided to give a dedicated team the resources, and Permission to do what they needed to do without holding closely to P&G Lock-ins, the product became a big success.

If you'd like to hear more about how you can create and use White Space to help your organization succeed, I invite you to 2 upcoming events where I'm the keynote speaker.  Next week, on May 18th, I'll be kicking off the Innovation Summit in Grand Rapids, MI.  Click on the link to register for this event.  On June 9 I'll be the keynote speaker at the CIO Magazine Perspectives event in Chicago.  Click on the link to register for that event.  All organizations, and functions within organizations, benefit from understanding how White Space is important to growth – so come along and listen to how you can apply these concepts in 2010!