{"id":689816,"date":"2025-09-13T05:30:43","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T02:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/big-business-can-still-innovate-by-hiring-startup-leaders\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T05:30:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T02:30:43","slug":"big-business-can-still-innovate-by-hiring-startup-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/big-business-can-still-innovate-by-hiring-startup-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Big business can still innovate \u2014 by hiring startup leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Startups love hiring big business leaders into advisory and C-suite roles.<\/span><\/p>\n

These hires solve a common issue: as startups grow and look to compete with incumbents, they need some corporate talent to see them over the line.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But big, established businesses have a different common issue. They\u2019re too big, too established, and being outcompeted by the very companies that are hiring their talent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Right now, it\u2019s the hare and the tortoise \u2014 but slow and steady isn\u2019t winning the race this time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Established businesses need to take a page out of the startup playbook and hire for the C-suite from <\/span>their<\/span><\/i> competitors \u2013 the startups.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Larger, more established businesses are often embarrassingly slow to change. They\u2019re overly bureaucratic, addicted to legacy systems, and unable to compete in the race for new, critical opportunities.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, bureaucratic silos at IBM led to budget fights and leaders focusing on protecting mainframe revenue instead of aggressively pivoting to cloud computing. Competition raced ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n

Large businesses are far too slow to innovate. Stuck in an \u201cif it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it\u201d mentality, they aren\u2019t chasing new products, markets, and technologies fast enough to stay competitive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This was the case for Kodak, which clung to the once-lucrative film business for far too long. Failing to embrace the digital camera space, which cannibalised film sales, the company eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, the proliferation of AI in the corporate world \u2014 and its ability to facilitate breakneck innovation with small teams \u2014 must be a wake-up call for big business.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, what\u2019s the solution? Big businesses need to hire boldly. They must put their faith in tech entrepreneurs and bring them into the C-suite.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Startup leaders can conquer the groupthink that currently infects the boardrooms of most established businesses, where executives are often hired from the same industry and from other large, incumbent businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n

These leaders can act like disruptors, bringing in new ideas and a culture of experimentation. They\u2019re also not afraid to fail \u2014 because they recognise this is a key step towards innovation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Startup leaders are also far more tuned in to shifting consumer trends. They reflexively look pan-sector, pan-market to identify trends and opportunities \u2014 and will act decisively to seize them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Big businesses hold the customer data and assume it gives them the clearest view of emerging trends. This is wrong. Their data is biased towards the status quo, and where trends can be identified, they\u2019re micro-trends taking place within the strict confines of the existing business and its products or services.<\/span><\/p>\n

For this, instinct is far more important \u2014 and startup leaders tend to have the strongest market instincts.<\/span><\/p>\n

Startup leaders are also adept at breaking down departmental silos to build agile, cross-functional teams.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, a startup leader is used to working in a tight team directly with engineers, marketers, and customer support to build and scale new products at speed. At large businesses, the same process is compartmentalised, full of barriers, and indirect.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some will question whether startup leaders can handle the big corporate machine. But the truth is, that\u2019s where many of the best ones started. Most corporate leaders have worked only in corporates. Startup leaders have almost always done both.<\/span><\/p>\n

Others might wonder if entrepreneurs will want to give up their startup freedom. It\u2019s a great point \u2014\u00a0and the answer is to give them freedom. Let them have an outsized impact, give them the budget they need. They\u2019ll move on quickly and leave an innovation playbook \u2014 that\u2019s fine.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m an entrepreneur and investor \u2014 I build and back startups. I love seeing them disrupt industries. But there\u2019s no reason industries can\u2019t be disrupted by the incumbents too. The competitiveness would benefit everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n

But to get there, we need to see big businesses leaning on the expertise of their startup competitors.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our Technology category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Startups love hiring big business leaders into advisory and C-suite roles. These hires solve a common issue: as startups grow and look to compete with incumbents, they need some corporate talent to see them over the line.\u00a0 But big, established businesses have a different common issue. They\u2019re too big, too established, and being outcompeted by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":689817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/img-cdn.tnwcdn.com\/image\/tnw-blurple?filter_last=1&fit=1280%2C640&url=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn0.tnwcdn.com%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F1%2Ffiles%2F2025%2F08%2FUntitled-design-2.jpg&signature=a87de01e326ab147458cf8159a652455","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-689816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}