Harry L. Davis and Russ W. Rosenzweig

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The "Internal Venture Marketplace" is one new approach to successful new venture strategy that is gaining popularity among academics and executives. The Internal Venture Marketplace is a set of activities that transforms companies who perform Shakespeare consistently into repertory theaters with performance seasons that include classics as well as contemporary plays. That is to say, they engage in continuous innovation while retaining exceptional performance in the core business.

These transformative activities include ideation, discovery, analysis, strategizing, business plan creation, outside partnership exploration, and executive education around business strategy. The activities are conducted in a structured, deliverable-focused framework. A team of outside professionals (promoters and "impresarios") leads the existing cast of employees (actors and playwrights) in a set of activities (rehearsals) that culminates, in 4-6 months, in an actual event (performance) called the "Venture Bazaar" in which new business plans are presented to management. The activities that take place in the Internal Venture Marketplaces combine academic rigor with a Silicon Valley-style unleashing of the ideas and passion that create new businesses.

The theater metaphor helps describe the characters and events used in the Internal Venture Marketplace such as actors, directors, producers, playwrights, coaches, critics, rehearsals, dress rehearsals, and performances. Events have a seductive role in business and innovation. People remember experiences. The notion of a series of "tryouts" followed by rehearsals and practice or "jam" sessions leading up to an actual live performance/ competition generally evokes powerful memories from people’s experiences in theater, music or sports.

What is the Internal Venture Marketplace?

• A series of events and activities (tryouts, coaching sessions, practices and rehearsals) located insides companies and culminating in a "bazaar" that displays new business ideas (scripts) for a brief period
  
• A high energy, fun, and visual set of experiences
  
• Sellers (playwrights and actors) compete aggressively for seed money to launch their productions; buyers (producers looking for new blockbuster productions to support) shop across many investment possibilities
  
• Repeated bazaars over time offer new business ideas to the same or different buyers and allows participants who "missed the first one" to try it out

How do you create an Internal Venture Marketplace? First, you must pitch a tent on the front lawn of the company, which will be the venue for participants. The "idea tent" is a place for strategy space and ideation. Following the metaphor, the idea tent is something seductive and unique, drawing imagery that provides sensory excitement: smells of good food from foreign lands; sounds of festive music, etc. Inside the tent is a raw and restless spirit. The activities that take place inside the tent represent the distilled essence of entrepreneurial energy. The tent, of course, is a metaphor for designated spaces in the company: physical spaces for the writing scripts, storing props, and rehearsing; virtual spaces on the Internet for collaboration and idea-sharing; and cognitive spaces, i.e., encouragement, support, and free-time by senior executives to promote these activities.

Why create an Internal Venture Marketplace? One reason is that it’s a seductive, non-disruptive approach to stirring the entrepreneurial passion that is lying dormant in large companies. Ideas for growth can come from any source at any time. The Internal Venture Marketplace allows anyone within the company to submit ideas (basic plots) for consideration. Original ideas are typically submitted by individuals (individuals generate useful ideas more often than do groups) but then evolve into team-based work to further hone the ideation and craft a business plan, or script.

Marketplaces are tough, no-nonsense, non-political places. Business scripts are honed and crafted over a period of time, and then prepared for "performance" at the bazaar. Entrepreneurial actors gather together on stages or in booths to present their business scripts to senior executives and, sometimes to outside investors and venture capitalists. Just like in a real marketplace or at an actual repertory theater, some stages attract sell-out crowds, while others are quiet and abandoned, panned by the critics before the show even gets off the ground.

Whether or not business scripts are accepted by producers and directors for "production," the experience of participating in the Internal Venture Marketplace are most memorable events for employees. Likely, the internal corporate entrepreneurs will have more fun and learning more in a "safe" and low-risk environment, than will their dot.com startup counterparts. They also, through education in the "art" of business plan writing, become more agile, creative, and loyal employees.

Education is an important component of the Internal Venture Marketplace. The goal is to create a rigorous environment with coaches, "acting teachers," and "professional playwrights" (outside professors and consultants with deep experience in new venture strategy) who teach with skill and passion. Short, action-oriented programs are created which teach professionals about "new venture strategy" concepts such as marketing, competitive strategy, decision sciences, leadership, and the art and science of writing a business plan. Often, distance-learning modules and web-based technologies such as threaded discussions are used to supplement the on-site teaching.

Few companies to date have succeeded in pitching the Internal Venture Marketplace Tent on their own. New roles and players are emerging that are critical to the innovation process and include promoter, impresario, ringmaster, artistic director, organizer, and producer. Given that this new kind of performance venue is a different world for most companies, there is an enormous benefit to hiring outsiders to assume responsibility for key elements of the innovation process. New types of organizations called knowledge brokers are emerging to fill this role. These firms span multiple markets and technology domains and innovate by brokering knowledge. What these firms bring to the table are access, learning, linking, and implementation. Round Table Group, the firm that originated the Internal Venture marketplace, is one such organization.

So come forward corporate leaders – pitch the tent and awaken the promising startup within! The Internal Venture Marketplace will teach entrepreneurial actors and playwrights to win on the clarity of their vision, the rigor or their strategies, and the speed of their execution.