How to Forget
From 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution, Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. 2005
Don’t be insular. NewCo should hire outsiders in key management roles and strongly consider an outsider to head the business. Outsiders challenge institutional memory and are instrumental in building new competencies.
Don’t assign status based on size. NewCo should report at least one level above CoreCo in order to reduce the pressures on NewCo for short-term results and to ensure that CoreCo does not hoard resources.
Rearrange the moving parts. NewCo should reconsider how major business functions such as marketing and product development interact. Established patterns of interaction within CoreCo are usually incompatible with the new business model.
Build a new dashboard. The company should not base NewCo’s performance on CoreCo’s metrics. Doing so reinforces CoreCo’s formula for success, not NewCo’s.
Dare to make complex judgments. The company should not judge the performance of NewCo’s leader too heavily against plans.
Promote new thinking about success. NewCo’s leader should create a unique set of beliefs about actions that lead to success and regularly reinforce them. CoreCo’s beliefs may not apply in NewCo’s environment.
