Description
This presentation explain entrepreneur vs corporate executive who makes the best it ceo.
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 1
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive:
Who makes the best IT CEO?
Quarter 1. 2014
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 2
A failed experiment
When Internet pioneer Jerry Yang announced in 2007 that he would be taking over the chief executive role
at the Yahoo, the company he co-founded over a decade earlier, speculation ran high over whether the
dotcom wunderkind could turnaround the flailing business.
Could the Internet pioneer transition from a successful entrepreneur to a corporate CEO? While he had
never been the chief executive– he held the ambiguous title of Chief Yahoo! – Yang was a company insider
who has been with the business in its entire 15 years of existence.
As it turned out, he failed miserably. Within two years, his reign had ended, and his time at the top was
most remembered for rejecting a generous offer from Microsoft offer to buy the company. When it was
announced he would be stepping down from the company, Yahoo’s market cap surged by $2.3 billion in
after-hours trading.
BusinessWeek listed Yang as one of the “Worst Managers of 2008”. As of January 17, 2012 when Yang
resigned from Yahoo’s board, the company’s market capitalisation was US$20 billion, less than half the
US$44 billion Microsoft had offered for the company.
His reputation had also suffered irrevocable damage, and so did the prospects of tech entrepreneurs
harbouring ambitions of running large corporations themselves.
Is Yang’s experience reflective of the reality on the ground? With their knack for innovation and ability to
handle risk, do entrepreneurs make for good CEOs, or should company boards stick to the battle-hardened
executive who has paid his dues climbing the corporate ladder.
A foot in every pie
Among other things, successful technology entrepreneurs are known for their ability to take on risk and
build products and organisations from scratch – initially taking on the key roles of the business, from
product development, operations, finance to sales and marketing.
They also become proficient in raising money and dealing with investors, as outside funding is the
lifeblood of tech and web start-ups. In the fast moving world of technology, these individuals must also
able to adapt quickly to a changing market place, adapting their business models as circumstances
change or initial assumptions fail under real world conditions.
The ability to attract talent – often with the lure of nothing more than the promise of future profits - as the
company grows, is another key attribute.
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 3
Knowing when to
get out of the way
How does this compare with what is expected of a
CEO? Corporate leaders are generally far removed
from the day-to-day grind of running a business.
Their key role is to define and communicate a clear
vision and core values, and then find the right
talent to execute a strategy to achieve that vision in
accordance to the organisation’s values. They have
to know when, where and why to deploy or redeploy
talent and resources.
Or put another way, the chief executive has the
overall responsibility for creating, planning,
implementing, and integrating the strategic
direction of a company in order to meet its financial
goals. The CEO generally reports to a Board of
Directors.
The model corporate CEO is generally
acknowledged to be Jack Welch, the legendary
former head of American conglomerate GE.
When asked how he transformed the then
underperforming corporate giant into a dynamic
organisation focused on innovation and growth,
Welch replied: “My job is to put the best people on
the biggest opportunities and the best allocation of
dollars in the right places. That’s about it. Transfer
ideas and allocate resources and get out of the
way.”
After saving up almost US$18,000 from working at a waste
water treatment facility in Northern China, American Nigel
Wylie came to Singapore in early 2011 to start Thrive Water, a
clean technology business aimed at allowing Asia’s growing
population to access greater volumes of clean water.
Working from home as a one-man outfit, his first projects
were with small engineering firms that treated waste
water as well as Hyflux, the local giant in the industry. The
company had broken even by April 2011 and he later secured
big name customers such as Singapore’s national water
agency PUB as well as regional players in Indonesia and the
Philippines.
His rapid success did not go unnoticed, and Wylie was
headhunted by YME Link, a clean technology investment
group, to head their operations as managing director. He
continues to run Thrive in parallel with his new appointment.
Unlike the free-spending ways of some start-ups, Wylie is
financially conservative, watching and accounting for every
dollar he spends.
“It’s so cost prohibitive in Singapore that only the best of
the best are going to come out of this alive. You can have an
idea but to survive here you have to hit the ground running.
I’m not a seeker of pain but I’m attracted to the challenging
environment,” he explained.
Apart from his technical knowhow, this attention to fiscal
detail could have been part of his allure for YME, which
partners with clean tech companies, helping them access
technical, marketing and other resources.
He has also shown a knack for attracting talent and building
teams, an important skill for a CEO of a growing enterprise.
“There is a lot of left over manufacturing talent in their early
40s. They lost their jobs when the sector was down and
some would have ended up as taxi drivers. We managed to
pick up some of them,” he said.
A world away from working in sewage or his bedroom, Mr
Wylie now sits in an office in a Tuas facility overseeing over
30 employees. However, he has to battle perceptions by
some of his staff – some with decades of career experience
- that he is too young and inexperienced to run a large
operation.
His way of overcoming these biases is to get his hands dirty
along with his employees.
“When you get your hands dirty, it’s really appreciated in a
culture that doesn’t do that. Everything I expect my guys to
do in the factory I’ve done before.”
From Home Office to Corner Office
Nigel Wylie,
CEO of Thrive water, Singapore
A Spring Professional Case Study
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 4
Never the twain
shall meet?
As the competencies required for successful
entrepreneurs are different from those expected of
chief executives, in most cases they are not best
suited to run a large organisation in a traditional
corporate setting.
Due to their personalities and background, most
entrepreneurs tend to be a disruptive force within
a company. Since the successful ones are driven
and ambitious risk-takers, they are generally geared
for action since their survival depends on it. On the
flip side, this means that they may not excel at key
management skills such as coaching, team-building
and talent development. They are not adept at
getting out of the way to let others execute his vision.
This explains why many successful tech
entrepreneurs appoint an experienced CEO to run
their the businesses they founded after it reaches a
certain scale. The good news is that if one is willing to
learn, these skills can be acquired over time. And for
tech entrepreneurs who can accept the constraints
of working within a large corporation and focus on
the big picture of driving an organisation towards its
vision, their ability to take risk and move quickly can
be a boon to companies operating in an increasingly
volatile environment.
India, for instance, has had thrown up several recent
examples of large companies appointing former
entrepreneurs to run their businesses. These include
Avinash Vashistha, the founder of NEO IT who was
appointed chairman and geography managing
director for Accenture in India in 2011 (Refer to Case
Study: A Six-Year Job Interview).
While still a novelty in the corporate world Vashista
and others like him demonstrate that it is possible for
entrepreneurs to lead large enterprises successfully.
Indeed, these individuals are able to effectively
combine their natural flair for risk-taking with
strategic leadership to give their organisations an
edge over the competition. The key for IT companies,
however, is being able to identify the rare few who can
make the total spectrum of their skills greater than
the sum of its sometimes conflicting parts.
A Six-Year Job Interview
Avinash Vashistha,
Geography Managing Director for Accenture
in India
A Spring Professional Case Study
In 1996, after working in senior leadership roles at Canadian
telecom giant Nortel, Avinash Vashistha an expat working
in India, decided capitalise on the booming Indian economy
by starting Neo IT, a consulting firm that worked with clients
globally in business and technology.
After a decade of running the business, it expanded into
education and investment, and was renamed Tholons.
From that time, Vashista had opportunities to work with
Accenture, the global technology consulting giant.
Clearly impressed by his abilities, Accenture in 2011 offered
him a position to head India and even bought the consulting
part of his business.
“It took me 6 months to decide,” said Vashistha in a recent
interview with The Economic Times. He admitted that he
had more business in his own business and that had a big
impact across the organisation.
His experience at Neo IT and Tholons had put him in
a variety of roles that connected him with Fortune 50
CEOs, CFOs and CIOs. As such, working with an MNC like
Accenture was not an issue as he had interacted in depth
with the global top talent pool.
“You should consider people inside the organisation as
clients, set aside your ego and look at the challenges that
your peers and seniors face. It’s a solution-based approach
since you have to feel convinced about what you’re doing. If
you’re a leader, you can’t feel like a manager,” he said.
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 5
For further details about Spring Professional
in Asia, please contact
Imran Johri
Marketing Director
e-mail: [email protected]
tel: +65 6235 4962
springasia.com
doc_246350265.pdf
This presentation explain entrepreneur vs corporate executive who makes the best it ceo.
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 1
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive:
Who makes the best IT CEO?
Quarter 1. 2014
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 2
A failed experiment
When Internet pioneer Jerry Yang announced in 2007 that he would be taking over the chief executive role
at the Yahoo, the company he co-founded over a decade earlier, speculation ran high over whether the
dotcom wunderkind could turnaround the flailing business.
Could the Internet pioneer transition from a successful entrepreneur to a corporate CEO? While he had
never been the chief executive– he held the ambiguous title of Chief Yahoo! – Yang was a company insider
who has been with the business in its entire 15 years of existence.
As it turned out, he failed miserably. Within two years, his reign had ended, and his time at the top was
most remembered for rejecting a generous offer from Microsoft offer to buy the company. When it was
announced he would be stepping down from the company, Yahoo’s market cap surged by $2.3 billion in
after-hours trading.
BusinessWeek listed Yang as one of the “Worst Managers of 2008”. As of January 17, 2012 when Yang
resigned from Yahoo’s board, the company’s market capitalisation was US$20 billion, less than half the
US$44 billion Microsoft had offered for the company.
His reputation had also suffered irrevocable damage, and so did the prospects of tech entrepreneurs
harbouring ambitions of running large corporations themselves.
Is Yang’s experience reflective of the reality on the ground? With their knack for innovation and ability to
handle risk, do entrepreneurs make for good CEOs, or should company boards stick to the battle-hardened
executive who has paid his dues climbing the corporate ladder.
A foot in every pie
Among other things, successful technology entrepreneurs are known for their ability to take on risk and
build products and organisations from scratch – initially taking on the key roles of the business, from
product development, operations, finance to sales and marketing.
They also become proficient in raising money and dealing with investors, as outside funding is the
lifeblood of tech and web start-ups. In the fast moving world of technology, these individuals must also
able to adapt quickly to a changing market place, adapting their business models as circumstances
change or initial assumptions fail under real world conditions.
The ability to attract talent – often with the lure of nothing more than the promise of future profits - as the
company grows, is another key attribute.
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 3
Knowing when to
get out of the way
How does this compare with what is expected of a
CEO? Corporate leaders are generally far removed
from the day-to-day grind of running a business.
Their key role is to define and communicate a clear
vision and core values, and then find the right
talent to execute a strategy to achieve that vision in
accordance to the organisation’s values. They have
to know when, where and why to deploy or redeploy
talent and resources.
Or put another way, the chief executive has the
overall responsibility for creating, planning,
implementing, and integrating the strategic
direction of a company in order to meet its financial
goals. The CEO generally reports to a Board of
Directors.
The model corporate CEO is generally
acknowledged to be Jack Welch, the legendary
former head of American conglomerate GE.
When asked how he transformed the then
underperforming corporate giant into a dynamic
organisation focused on innovation and growth,
Welch replied: “My job is to put the best people on
the biggest opportunities and the best allocation of
dollars in the right places. That’s about it. Transfer
ideas and allocate resources and get out of the
way.”
After saving up almost US$18,000 from working at a waste
water treatment facility in Northern China, American Nigel
Wylie came to Singapore in early 2011 to start Thrive Water, a
clean technology business aimed at allowing Asia’s growing
population to access greater volumes of clean water.
Working from home as a one-man outfit, his first projects
were with small engineering firms that treated waste
water as well as Hyflux, the local giant in the industry. The
company had broken even by April 2011 and he later secured
big name customers such as Singapore’s national water
agency PUB as well as regional players in Indonesia and the
Philippines.
His rapid success did not go unnoticed, and Wylie was
headhunted by YME Link, a clean technology investment
group, to head their operations as managing director. He
continues to run Thrive in parallel with his new appointment.
Unlike the free-spending ways of some start-ups, Wylie is
financially conservative, watching and accounting for every
dollar he spends.
“It’s so cost prohibitive in Singapore that only the best of
the best are going to come out of this alive. You can have an
idea but to survive here you have to hit the ground running.
I’m not a seeker of pain but I’m attracted to the challenging
environment,” he explained.
Apart from his technical knowhow, this attention to fiscal
detail could have been part of his allure for YME, which
partners with clean tech companies, helping them access
technical, marketing and other resources.
He has also shown a knack for attracting talent and building
teams, an important skill for a CEO of a growing enterprise.
“There is a lot of left over manufacturing talent in their early
40s. They lost their jobs when the sector was down and
some would have ended up as taxi drivers. We managed to
pick up some of them,” he said.
A world away from working in sewage or his bedroom, Mr
Wylie now sits in an office in a Tuas facility overseeing over
30 employees. However, he has to battle perceptions by
some of his staff – some with decades of career experience
- that he is too young and inexperienced to run a large
operation.
His way of overcoming these biases is to get his hands dirty
along with his employees.
“When you get your hands dirty, it’s really appreciated in a
culture that doesn’t do that. Everything I expect my guys to
do in the factory I’ve done before.”
From Home Office to Corner Office
Nigel Wylie,
CEO of Thrive water, Singapore
A Spring Professional Case Study
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 4
Never the twain
shall meet?
As the competencies required for successful
entrepreneurs are different from those expected of
chief executives, in most cases they are not best
suited to run a large organisation in a traditional
corporate setting.
Due to their personalities and background, most
entrepreneurs tend to be a disruptive force within
a company. Since the successful ones are driven
and ambitious risk-takers, they are generally geared
for action since their survival depends on it. On the
flip side, this means that they may not excel at key
management skills such as coaching, team-building
and talent development. They are not adept at
getting out of the way to let others execute his vision.
This explains why many successful tech
entrepreneurs appoint an experienced CEO to run
their the businesses they founded after it reaches a
certain scale. The good news is that if one is willing to
learn, these skills can be acquired over time. And for
tech entrepreneurs who can accept the constraints
of working within a large corporation and focus on
the big picture of driving an organisation towards its
vision, their ability to take risk and move quickly can
be a boon to companies operating in an increasingly
volatile environment.
India, for instance, has had thrown up several recent
examples of large companies appointing former
entrepreneurs to run their businesses. These include
Avinash Vashistha, the founder of NEO IT who was
appointed chairman and geography managing
director for Accenture in India in 2011 (Refer to Case
Study: A Six-Year Job Interview).
While still a novelty in the corporate world Vashista
and others like him demonstrate that it is possible for
entrepreneurs to lead large enterprises successfully.
Indeed, these individuals are able to effectively
combine their natural flair for risk-taking with
strategic leadership to give their organisations an
edge over the competition. The key for IT companies,
however, is being able to identify the rare few who can
make the total spectrum of their skills greater than
the sum of its sometimes conflicting parts.
A Six-Year Job Interview
Avinash Vashistha,
Geography Managing Director for Accenture
in India
A Spring Professional Case Study
In 1996, after working in senior leadership roles at Canadian
telecom giant Nortel, Avinash Vashistha an expat working
in India, decided capitalise on the booming Indian economy
by starting Neo IT, a consulting firm that worked with clients
globally in business and technology.
After a decade of running the business, it expanded into
education and investment, and was renamed Tholons.
From that time, Vashista had opportunities to work with
Accenture, the global technology consulting giant.
Clearly impressed by his abilities, Accenture in 2011 offered
him a position to head India and even bought the consulting
part of his business.
“It took me 6 months to decide,” said Vashistha in a recent
interview with The Economic Times. He admitted that he
had more business in his own business and that had a big
impact across the organisation.
His experience at Neo IT and Tholons had put him in
a variety of roles that connected him with Fortune 50
CEOs, CFOs and CIOs. As such, working with an MNC like
Accenture was not an issue as he had interacted in depth
with the global top talent pool.
“You should consider people inside the organisation as
clients, set aside your ego and look at the challenges that
your peers and seniors face. It’s a solution-based approach
since you have to feel convinced about what you’re doing. If
you’re a leader, you can’t feel like a manager,” he said.
Entrepreneur Vs Corporate Executive: Who makes the best IT CEO? 5
For further details about Spring Professional
in Asia, please contact
Imran Johri
Marketing Director
e-mail: [email protected]
tel: +65 6235 4962
springasia.com
doc_246350265.pdf