How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 1
How They Did It: Seven Intrapreneur
Success Stories
by Georgia Flight
Embarking on a new product or service should be easy with the resources of an established
company at your disposal, right? Not necessarily. If you’re launching a start-up within a bigger
company, you’ll have a host of issues to overcome — whether you’re an underling with a
product innovation or a manager who’s signed on to pilot something new. Can you convince
management and customers that the idea is not only great but doable, scalable, and profitable?
Can you draft an ambitious plan that isn’t overloaded with risk? Will you be an effective
manager? Read on to find out how intrapreneurs at Kodak, Toyota, Yahoo, and other big
companies pursued bold ideas that advanced their companies — and themselves.
Kodak
Intrapreneur:
Cheryl Pohlman, worldwide product and marketing communications director for inkjet
systems
Venture:
Inkjet printer division
Lessons Learned:
Successful ideas leverage the company’s strengths; the best ones fill a real customer
need.
It was hardly a secret that Kodak was struggling to transition into the digital age; in mid-
2006, the company’s stock was off more than ten bucks a share, while other industry
players rushed into the digital space. So industry analysts were doubly surprised early last
year when the photo giant announced it was entering the consumer printing market.
Though inkjet printers were hardly a revolutionary idea, entering unfamiliar territory
represented a major intrapreneurial challenge for the company.
Cheryl Pohlman, who worked in Kodak’s marketing department, was chosen to
spearhead the effort. From 2003 to 2006 her team did exhaustive research to pinpoint
customer dissatisfaction with the inkjet market and found three main things consumers
disliked about their current printers: the cost of ink, the quality of prints, and the
difficulty they had using the technology. Pohlman knew Kodak had the brand presence
that consumers would associate with high quality and the technical know-how to make
machines user-friendly, but she also knew that what was going to grab everyone’s
attention was price.
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 2
Instead of focusing on making vastly cheaper printers, Pohlman and her team tuned into
something they knew from their own experiences: People were not printing the majority
of their pictures because ink cartridges were so expensive. “We decided to make our ink
cartridges 50 percent cheaper than our rivals’,” Pohlman says. “We knew that’s what
consumers really wanted. And even though we’re a big company, we entered the market
from the position of challengers.”
This underdog posturing created a lot of buzz — customers could suddenly buy $25 ink
cartridges from Kodak, a well-known and trusted company, rather than shelling out $60-
$80 to buy ink from less familiar manufacturers such as Konica and Elite Image.
Analysts and consumers praised the company for bringing prices down to earth. Kodak
sold 520,000 printers last year, beating its target of a half-million units, which helped
sales in the company’s digital business grow 17 percent in the last quarter of 2007.
Toyota
Intraprenuer:
Jeri Yoshizu, Scion sales and promotion manager
Venture:
Scion17, Internet radio station
Lessons Learned:
If you hit a corporate roadblock, ask yourself: Will an altered plan garner equally good
results?
Jeri Yoshizu was part of the team that launched the edgy new Scion brand in 2003. Since
the company’s marketing plan for the brand was its “subversive” image, Yoshizu
developed an idea for a free Internet radio station called Scion17. Her concept: The
station would allow DJs and artists to play any music they wanted and give her young
target audience access to songs they’d never hear on conventional radio. Yoshizu got the
go-ahead — but with one potentially lethal condition: DJ selections would have to be Grated
to protect the company’s image.
Yoshizu was faced with finding a way to combine an edgy audience with corporatefriendly
beats. To get the message out to her target audience, Yoshizu knew she had to
start speaking their language. Instead of buying TV or print ads, she turned to social
networking sites to spread the word, letting artists know that no genre was off-limits —
only profanity was. Launched in July 2007, the station now gets 10,000 listener hours per
month, and the Scion brand is getting the kind of advertising money can’t buy. “It’s
completely word of mouth, which is what Scion is about. A lot of DJs promote us on
their MySpace pages,” Yoshizu says. “Now, instead of us searching for new artists, the
ones we want are lining up requesting to be a part of it.”
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 3
Yahoo
Intrapreneur:
Scott Gatz, former senior director of advanced products
Venture:
Sponsored search engine
Lessons Learned:
Just because you had the idea doesn’t mean you’ll be put in charge — and that may be
best for you and your brainchild.
Scott Gatz, the man responsible for, among other things, launching Yahoo’s RSS
program, had a brainstorm: He knew Yahoo needed to move to a sponsored search
model, rather than continue relying on directory-style searches. When he pitched the idea
at an executive offsite in August 2001 (the group included founders Jerry Yang and
David Filo), he was general manager of Yahoo Search, so he felt confident that he’d be
put in charge of the new venture. But his boss at the time, Chief Products Officer Tim
Brady, asked VP of Search Jeff Weiner to oversee the project instead.
Gatz, who had led teams of 30 to 40 people, felt he’d been leapfrogged. “I took umbrage
with it,” he says. “I thought, ‘Hey, this is my idea, so why would I bring in this
outsider?’” But as the project progressed, Gatz realized that he would have been in over
his head if he’d been given the post. “The sponsored search project involved managing
hundreds of people and running a business making multiple hundreds of millions of
dollars — eventually billions. I didn’t have the experience to handle that at the time,”
Gatz now admits. Weiner’s experience, particularly in managing larger teams, turned out
to be a huge asset. “Thanks to Jeff,” he says, “by the time I did my next project, I was so
much better.”
Wal-Mart
Intrapreneur:
Alicia Ledlie, senior director for health business development
Venture:
In-store health clinics
Lessons Learned:
Just because you didn’t come up with the idea, doesn’t mean you can’t lead the project;
those who interact directly with customers are often best at feature development.
Alicia Ledlie was a co-manager at a Wal-Mart store in Long Island, N.Y., when she
attended a conference at the company’s Arkansas headquarters and heard about a possible
new venture: in-store health clinics. Because of her knowledge of her Long Island
customers, she immediately understood the potential for the idea to succeed. “I knew that
many people who shopped in our store had to go to the emergency room every time they
got sick, because they had no insurance,” Ledlie said. She applied to join the new team
and was hired in 2006. Though she had no health-care industry experience, she quickly
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 4
took on a leading role. Little more than two years later, Ledlie is running the in-store
program, and she has overseen the implementation of more than 79 in-store health clinics
in 12 states.
It was Ledlie’s idea to include drug-testing services for Wal-Mart job applicants in the
clinics’ scope of services. Ledlie knew that all new hires had to have a drug test within 24
hours of receiving a job offer. “Working in the stores, I’d seen how this requirement
created a challenge for recruits who relied on public transportation,” she says. “Adding
this service to the clinics’ roster was a quick win. Store managers raved about the effect it
had on helping them keep new recruits.” Wal-Mart plans to add as many as 2,000 sites in
the next five to seven years.
Caribou Coffee
Intrapreneur:
Kathy Hollenhorst, senior vice president of marketing
Venture:
Customer loyalty program
Lessons Learned:
When approval is stalled, keep refining your idea and make it better.
With 484 stores in 18 states, Minneapolis-based Caribou Coffee is the United States’
second-largest coffee chain, but its employees can never rest while in the shadow of that
other coffee company. That’s why Kathy Hollenhorst, a senior VP of marketing who had
helped the company sign licensing deals with General Mills and Kemp’s Ice Cream,
started asking: What did Caribou have that Starbucks didn’t? She examined the business
— from its corporate philosophy to its retail locations — and decided the key was
customer loyalty. “The loyalty program became my pet project,” she says, “And to be
honest, the organization wasn’t ready for it.”
Implementing a complex system of points and rewards at each of their 484 retail
locations made Caribou executives nervous. But Hollenhorst believed in her idea and
didn’t back down. “You have to be willing to be laughed at and not take it personally.
Pursuing innovation at today’s companies is like running a marathon at a sprint — it’s
incredibly hard work that seems to go on forever,” she says.
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 5
It took more than a year of presentations and research, but eventually Hollenhorst
convinced the company to test her program at a handful of locations. How’d she do it?
Instead of repeating the same mantra over and over, Hollenhorst used that time to finetune
the project and added an element that complements the company’s friendly,
Midwestern philosophy of “surprise and delight.” Cash registers use a variable messaging
program to prompt random rewards. “It pops a message up on the screen when a person
makes a purchase, randomly selecting them for a nice surprise — a bigger drink, a free
muffin,” Hollenhorst explains. A company-wide roll-out is slated for late 2008.
iRobot
Intrapreneur:
Jim Lynch, senior electrical engineer
Venture:
The Looj, gutter-cleaning robot
Lessons Learned:
Never underestimate the power of a well-earned reputation; enlist mentors when you
need to learn new skills like management.
Jim Lynch’s big idea came out of the most ordinary of activities — cleaning the gutters
on his suburban Massachusetts home. “It occurred to me that this was a perfect job for a
robot,” Lynch says, “because it fit into our company’s three criteria: dumb, dirty, and
dangerous.” A senior electrical engineer at Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot, Lynch began
tinkering with different models and built a prototype using a spaghetti ladle and an
electric screwdriver. His chance to present it came in September 2006, when the
company held its first-ever “idea bake-off,” where employees got 10 minutes each to
pitch an idea for a new product.
Lynch’s project was green-lighted by the company brass, but his joy quickly turned to
panic. “We got the word that we had to have it out for leaf season — in September 2007,”
he says. “That gave us only months to get it tested, proven, and packaged — and there
were only five people on the team.”
A nine-year company veteran, Lynch had a reputation as an innovative and hard-working
team player — and it saved his project. “People came up to me and volunteered to work
on it,” he says. “But becoming a project manager was a new role for me. I was used to
guiding technicians in the day-to-day. Suddenly I had to worry about everything: parts,
technicians, if we were hitting our milestones.” To learn management on the job, Jim
“adopted” two of his more experienced colleagues and used them as consultants. “I talked
to them daily. They helped me with scheduling and kept me focused,” he says. The new
gutter-cleaning robot, named “Looj” (after the Olympic sport), launched on schedule.
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 6
Gateway
Intrapreneur:
Gary Elsasser, senior vice president of products
Venture:
Gateway One, a streamlined desktop computer
Lessons Learned:
Don’t lean too hard on past means of production when creating a totally new project.
In 2007, Gateway had long been playing the dangerous business game of catch-up with
Dell and HP, and its utilitarian PCs were being unfavorably compared to Apple’s stylish
iMac. “If there are $399 notebook computers out there, what direction can the desktop
computer go?” asked SVP Gary Elsasser, then an engineering products manager.
His team found that the answer was simple: elegance. Their passionate vision of a
redesign gave birth to the Gateway One, a streamlined desktop with a single external
wire. But while a radical redesign looks good on paper, actually rebuilding your platform
from the ground up can cause major operational headaches.
Unlike past projects, where the engineering department called the shots, “The Gateway
One is design-focused, so the industrial design guys had to be involved in every step,”
Elsasser says. “Both teams liked to complain about each other.”
Elsasser mediated between the teams by reminding them of their common goal and how
revolutionary it was for the company. It worked, largely because of a shared culture of
geekdom. “Technology isn’t just a job for us,” he explains, “It’s also a hobby. We put
everything we have into our ideas because it’s our life.”
Another problem was sourcing: The new product was so complex it required working
with more than 30 new suppliers. Elsasser and his team put in long hours that included
going to Asia to meet with individual suppliers. In hindsight, he said, the supply chain
should have been as revolutionary as the project. “If I were to do this again, I’d have
picked a production partner who was more focused on mobile machines, not a traditional
desktop provider,” Elsasser admits.
Though the company won’t disclose sales figures (Gateway was acquired by Acer, which
doesn’t break out sales by individual products), early buzz has been very positive: Tech
reviewers at Gizmodo have raved about Gateway One’s “sleek and thoughtful” design
and pronounced it “a very positive step forward” for Gateway.
How They Did It: Seven Intrapreneur
Success Stories
by Georgia Flight
Embarking on a new product or service should be easy with the resources of an established
company at your disposal, right? Not necessarily. If you’re launching a start-up within a bigger
company, you’ll have a host of issues to overcome — whether you’re an underling with a
product innovation or a manager who’s signed on to pilot something new. Can you convince
management and customers that the idea is not only great but doable, scalable, and profitable?
Can you draft an ambitious plan that isn’t overloaded with risk? Will you be an effective
manager? Read on to find out how intrapreneurs at Kodak, Toyota, Yahoo, and other big
companies pursued bold ideas that advanced their companies — and themselves.
Kodak
Intrapreneur:
Cheryl Pohlman, worldwide product and marketing communications director for inkjet
systems
Venture:
Inkjet printer division
Lessons Learned:
Successful ideas leverage the company’s strengths; the best ones fill a real customer
need.
It was hardly a secret that Kodak was struggling to transition into the digital age; in mid-
2006, the company’s stock was off more than ten bucks a share, while other industry
players rushed into the digital space. So industry analysts were doubly surprised early last
year when the photo giant announced it was entering the consumer printing market.
Though inkjet printers were hardly a revolutionary idea, entering unfamiliar territory
represented a major intrapreneurial challenge for the company.
Cheryl Pohlman, who worked in Kodak’s marketing department, was chosen to
spearhead the effort. From 2003 to 2006 her team did exhaustive research to pinpoint
customer dissatisfaction with the inkjet market and found three main things consumers
disliked about their current printers: the cost of ink, the quality of prints, and the
difficulty they had using the technology. Pohlman knew Kodak had the brand presence
that consumers would associate with high quality and the technical know-how to make
machines user-friendly, but she also knew that what was going to grab everyone’s
attention was price.
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 2
Instead of focusing on making vastly cheaper printers, Pohlman and her team tuned into
something they knew from their own experiences: People were not printing the majority
of their pictures because ink cartridges were so expensive. “We decided to make our ink
cartridges 50 percent cheaper than our rivals’,” Pohlman says. “We knew that’s what
consumers really wanted. And even though we’re a big company, we entered the market
from the position of challengers.”
This underdog posturing created a lot of buzz — customers could suddenly buy $25 ink
cartridges from Kodak, a well-known and trusted company, rather than shelling out $60-
$80 to buy ink from less familiar manufacturers such as Konica and Elite Image.
Analysts and consumers praised the company for bringing prices down to earth. Kodak
sold 520,000 printers last year, beating its target of a half-million units, which helped
sales in the company’s digital business grow 17 percent in the last quarter of 2007.
Toyota
Intraprenuer:
Jeri Yoshizu, Scion sales and promotion manager
Venture:
Scion17, Internet radio station
Lessons Learned:
If you hit a corporate roadblock, ask yourself: Will an altered plan garner equally good
results?
Jeri Yoshizu was part of the team that launched the edgy new Scion brand in 2003. Since
the company’s marketing plan for the brand was its “subversive” image, Yoshizu
developed an idea for a free Internet radio station called Scion17. Her concept: The
station would allow DJs and artists to play any music they wanted and give her young
target audience access to songs they’d never hear on conventional radio. Yoshizu got the
go-ahead — but with one potentially lethal condition: DJ selections would have to be Grated
to protect the company’s image.
Yoshizu was faced with finding a way to combine an edgy audience with corporatefriendly
beats. To get the message out to her target audience, Yoshizu knew she had to
start speaking their language. Instead of buying TV or print ads, she turned to social
networking sites to spread the word, letting artists know that no genre was off-limits —
only profanity was. Launched in July 2007, the station now gets 10,000 listener hours per
month, and the Scion brand is getting the kind of advertising money can’t buy. “It’s
completely word of mouth, which is what Scion is about. A lot of DJs promote us on
their MySpace pages,” Yoshizu says. “Now, instead of us searching for new artists, the
ones we want are lining up requesting to be a part of it.”
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 3
Yahoo
Intrapreneur:
Scott Gatz, former senior director of advanced products
Venture:
Sponsored search engine
Lessons Learned:
Just because you had the idea doesn’t mean you’ll be put in charge — and that may be
best for you and your brainchild.
Scott Gatz, the man responsible for, among other things, launching Yahoo’s RSS
program, had a brainstorm: He knew Yahoo needed to move to a sponsored search
model, rather than continue relying on directory-style searches. When he pitched the idea
at an executive offsite in August 2001 (the group included founders Jerry Yang and
David Filo), he was general manager of Yahoo Search, so he felt confident that he’d be
put in charge of the new venture. But his boss at the time, Chief Products Officer Tim
Brady, asked VP of Search Jeff Weiner to oversee the project instead.
Gatz, who had led teams of 30 to 40 people, felt he’d been leapfrogged. “I took umbrage
with it,” he says. “I thought, ‘Hey, this is my idea, so why would I bring in this
outsider?’” But as the project progressed, Gatz realized that he would have been in over
his head if he’d been given the post. “The sponsored search project involved managing
hundreds of people and running a business making multiple hundreds of millions of
dollars — eventually billions. I didn’t have the experience to handle that at the time,”
Gatz now admits. Weiner’s experience, particularly in managing larger teams, turned out
to be a huge asset. “Thanks to Jeff,” he says, “by the time I did my next project, I was so
much better.”
Wal-Mart
Intrapreneur:
Alicia Ledlie, senior director for health business development
Venture:
In-store health clinics
Lessons Learned:
Just because you didn’t come up with the idea, doesn’t mean you can’t lead the project;
those who interact directly with customers are often best at feature development.
Alicia Ledlie was a co-manager at a Wal-Mart store in Long Island, N.Y., when she
attended a conference at the company’s Arkansas headquarters and heard about a possible
new venture: in-store health clinics. Because of her knowledge of her Long Island
customers, she immediately understood the potential for the idea to succeed. “I knew that
many people who shopped in our store had to go to the emergency room every time they
got sick, because they had no insurance,” Ledlie said. She applied to join the new team
and was hired in 2006. Though she had no health-care industry experience, she quickly
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 4
took on a leading role. Little more than two years later, Ledlie is running the in-store
program, and she has overseen the implementation of more than 79 in-store health clinics
in 12 states.
It was Ledlie’s idea to include drug-testing services for Wal-Mart job applicants in the
clinics’ scope of services. Ledlie knew that all new hires had to have a drug test within 24
hours of receiving a job offer. “Working in the stores, I’d seen how this requirement
created a challenge for recruits who relied on public transportation,” she says. “Adding
this service to the clinics’ roster was a quick win. Store managers raved about the effect it
had on helping them keep new recruits.” Wal-Mart plans to add as many as 2,000 sites in
the next five to seven years.
Caribou Coffee
Intrapreneur:
Kathy Hollenhorst, senior vice president of marketing
Venture:
Customer loyalty program
Lessons Learned:
When approval is stalled, keep refining your idea and make it better.
With 484 stores in 18 states, Minneapolis-based Caribou Coffee is the United States’
second-largest coffee chain, but its employees can never rest while in the shadow of that
other coffee company. That’s why Kathy Hollenhorst, a senior VP of marketing who had
helped the company sign licensing deals with General Mills and Kemp’s Ice Cream,
started asking: What did Caribou have that Starbucks didn’t? She examined the business
— from its corporate philosophy to its retail locations — and decided the key was
customer loyalty. “The loyalty program became my pet project,” she says, “And to be
honest, the organization wasn’t ready for it.”
Implementing a complex system of points and rewards at each of their 484 retail
locations made Caribou executives nervous. But Hollenhorst believed in her idea and
didn’t back down. “You have to be willing to be laughed at and not take it personally.
Pursuing innovation at today’s companies is like running a marathon at a sprint — it’s
incredibly hard work that seems to go on forever,” she says.
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 5
It took more than a year of presentations and research, but eventually Hollenhorst
convinced the company to test her program at a handful of locations. How’d she do it?
Instead of repeating the same mantra over and over, Hollenhorst used that time to finetune
the project and added an element that complements the company’s friendly,
Midwestern philosophy of “surprise and delight.” Cash registers use a variable messaging
program to prompt random rewards. “It pops a message up on the screen when a person
makes a purchase, randomly selecting them for a nice surprise — a bigger drink, a free
muffin,” Hollenhorst explains. A company-wide roll-out is slated for late 2008.
iRobot
Intrapreneur:
Jim Lynch, senior electrical engineer
Venture:
The Looj, gutter-cleaning robot
Lessons Learned:
Never underestimate the power of a well-earned reputation; enlist mentors when you
need to learn new skills like management.
Jim Lynch’s big idea came out of the most ordinary of activities — cleaning the gutters
on his suburban Massachusetts home. “It occurred to me that this was a perfect job for a
robot,” Lynch says, “because it fit into our company’s three criteria: dumb, dirty, and
dangerous.” A senior electrical engineer at Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot, Lynch began
tinkering with different models and built a prototype using a spaghetti ladle and an
electric screwdriver. His chance to present it came in September 2006, when the
company held its first-ever “idea bake-off,” where employees got 10 minutes each to
pitch an idea for a new product.
Lynch’s project was green-lighted by the company brass, but his joy quickly turned to
panic. “We got the word that we had to have it out for leaf season — in September 2007,”
he says. “That gave us only months to get it tested, proven, and packaged — and there
were only five people on the team.”
A nine-year company veteran, Lynch had a reputation as an innovative and hard-working
team player — and it saved his project. “People came up to me and volunteered to work
on it,” he says. “But becoming a project manager was a new role for me. I was used to
guiding technicians in the day-to-day. Suddenly I had to worry about everything: parts,
technicians, if we were hitting our milestones.” To learn management on the job, Jim
“adopted” two of his more experienced colleagues and used them as consultants. “I talked
to them daily. They helped me with scheduling and kept me focused,” he says. The new
gutter-cleaning robot, named “Looj” (after the Olympic sport), launched on schedule.
How they did it: Seven Intrapreneur Success Stories 6
Gateway
Intrapreneur:
Gary Elsasser, senior vice president of products
Venture:
Gateway One, a streamlined desktop computer
Lessons Learned:
Don’t lean too hard on past means of production when creating a totally new project.
In 2007, Gateway had long been playing the dangerous business game of catch-up with
Dell and HP, and its utilitarian PCs were being unfavorably compared to Apple’s stylish
iMac. “If there are $399 notebook computers out there, what direction can the desktop
computer go?” asked SVP Gary Elsasser, then an engineering products manager.
His team found that the answer was simple: elegance. Their passionate vision of a
redesign gave birth to the Gateway One, a streamlined desktop with a single external
wire. But while a radical redesign looks good on paper, actually rebuilding your platform
from the ground up can cause major operational headaches.
Unlike past projects, where the engineering department called the shots, “The Gateway
One is design-focused, so the industrial design guys had to be involved in every step,”
Elsasser says. “Both teams liked to complain about each other.”
Elsasser mediated between the teams by reminding them of their common goal and how
revolutionary it was for the company. It worked, largely because of a shared culture of
geekdom. “Technology isn’t just a job for us,” he explains, “It’s also a hobby. We put
everything we have into our ideas because it’s our life.”
Another problem was sourcing: The new product was so complex it required working
with more than 30 new suppliers. Elsasser and his team put in long hours that included
going to Asia to meet with individual suppliers. In hindsight, he said, the supply chain
should have been as revolutionary as the project. “If I were to do this again, I’d have
picked a production partner who was more focused on mobile machines, not a traditional
desktop provider,” Elsasser admits.
Though the company won’t disclose sales figures (Gateway was acquired by Acer, which
doesn’t break out sales by individual products), early buzz has been very positive: Tech
reviewers at Gizmodo have raved about Gateway One’s “sleek and thoughtful” design
and pronounced it “a very positive step forward” for Gateway.