In the last decade, disruptive innovation has come primarily from startups like Uber, AirBnB, or not legacy companies. But Linda Yates argues that large companies can and should compete with start-ups by creating an internal innovation pipeline.

Linda joins Greg to discuss her new book, The Unicorn Within: How Companies Can Create Game-Changing Ventures at Startup Speed, which is a step-by-step guide for leading internal corporate innovation 

Linda Yates is the Founder and CEO of Mach49, which partners with companies to create their internal pipelines for new ventures and investments. The company helps its clients figure out how to disrupt their own market and innovate within their own industry.   

Looking at funding like an onion

44:26: If you think about Silicon Valley, we look at funding like an onion. Every layer of onion is a layer of risk. It could be a financial risk, technical risk, market risk, or, in the case of a large company, governance risk. You love it to death or you starve of oxygen. And every single internal entrepreneur must build a very rigorous business and execution plan designed to remove the greatest amount of risk on a least amount of capital.

15:26: The only way you are going to drive growth that matters and have a financial impact on these large multi-billion dollar multinational public companies is if they can innovate at scale.

The importance of understanding customer pain

43:36: What's the fundamental underlying principles of what we do? Understand customer pain. Everything you have to do has to be customer driven. We say customer insights are the currency of credibility. Everything else is an uninformed opinion.

The fundamental shift that created an existential crisis among large companies

09:44: The large companies could be fat, dumb, and happy. They didn't have to innovate with the speed with which they have to do it now because they weren't facing that whole category of competitors, which are these startups fueled with billions of dollars of capital and zero orthodoxies and antibodies coming after them. That's the fundamental shift that has created a little bit of an existential crisis among these large. 

• Dreamers and Disruptors: How the Evolution of Silicon Valley is Reshaping Our World by Paul Holland
• OmniBridge

• Professional Profile on Mach49
• Professional Profile on Forbes | Councils
• Linda Yates on LinkedIn

• The Unicorn Within: How Companies Can Create Game-Changing Ventures at Startup Speed