But as so many large companies, Coca-Cola needs to innovate<\/strong>. After all, other product industries are being disrupted by startups as well, from cigarettes (electronic cigarettes) to game consoles (OUYA<\/a>, Oculus Rift<\/a>), so the good old bottle of Coke may not be as safe as it appears.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve met with Stefan Jacob<\/a>, one of the 16 entrepreneurs chosen by the Coca-Cola Company to run, with a buddy, the Singapore Accelerator<\/strong> within the Coca-Cola Accelerator Network.<\/p>\n The organisational principle is easy to understand: eight buddy teams of entrepreneurs in eight cities in the world<\/strong> (Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Bangalore, Berlin, Singapore, Istanbul, Sydney, San Francisco) have all they need to test and try ideas, turn them into startups,<\/strong> and hopefully make it successfully thanks the company\u2019s huge network and scale, especially with the marketing and retail network.<\/p>\n The details of his story are way more interesting as they show how a big corporation, one of the most powerful brand in the world, can struggle when it comes to play and act as a startup.<\/p>\n Somewhere between the Entrepreneur in Residence and the Idea Lab<\/strong>, the new entities of Coca-Cola are blurring the lines. As we saw in other stories on corporate innovation (with MEST incubator in Ghana or General Electric Garage in Nigeria<\/a>), there\u2019s clearly no established pattern.<\/p>\n All eight teams don\u2019t have a specific roadmap and work objective, except they need to think in the (very broad) limits of the Happiness brand Coca-Cola<\/strong> embodies. Their role is not to hunt down for startups, but to create \u201ca network of entrepreneurs thinking from a Coke scale point of view\u201d<\/em><\/strong> as Stefan summarises.<\/p>\n In terms of methodology, all eight teams use the Lean startup model<\/strong> to iterate fast and try get an early customer validation before moving on.<\/p>\n The way these buddy teams were hired are also significant of the struggles of big companies today. No job posting was done, and Coke selected a few dozen people they interviewed collectively and individually.<\/p>\n Initially, all were hired as Coke employees<\/strong>, which turned to be an issue rapidly. \u201cBig companies are ruled and managed by lawyers<\/strong>, as they analyse every move in terms of risk avoidance.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>The problem is that they don\u2019t take into account the cost of lost opportunities to match these risks\u201d.<\/em> Of course, there\u2019s no going back on sanitary rules, ha says, but there\u2019s still too many rules and regulations.<\/p>\n After a few weeks, each piece of the Coca-Cola Accelerator Network has turned into an independent entity, funded by Coke, where buddy teams operate as innovation agencies,<\/strong> like in the advertising industry.<\/p>\n Technically, each pair of founders per city owns an entity fully funded by the company, and any new business gives them a right to equity.<\/p>\n The whole structure gives each buddy pair more room to hire, test and try, without falling into the compliance issues<\/strong> a big corporation necessarily faces (and which explains why the market for startup exits within the corporate world is so strong).<\/p>\n The most radical choice for the Coca-Cola Accelerator Network is its overall isolation from the rest of the company.<\/strong> When other corporate accelerators send their the company\u2019s staff every week or month at the accelerator to get a feeling of how startups actually work, Coca-Cola don\u2019t think it’s useful.<\/p>\n \u201cEach team has a mentor within the top managers of the group<\/strong>, and the VP Innovation has a dashboard<\/strong> with our projects and milestones\u201d<\/em>, says Stefan. \u201cBut overall, mixing employees with entrepreneurs, or vice-versa, is seen as a distraction<\/strong>, so we keep it to the bare minimum of a monthly connection\u201d.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In the beginning, the teams did try to instil a culture of rapid learning and experimentation in the group, but it\u2019s fundamentally too different from the startup world.<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"coca](\"http:\/\/innovao.cluster030.hosting.ovh.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/coca-cola-innovation-strategy-accelerator-network-startup-weekend-singapore-innovation-is-everywhere-corporate-innovation-series-stefan-jacob-3.png\")
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The Coca-Cola Accelerator Network: Eight buddy teams to startupify the Happiness brand<\/h2>\n
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Big companies and innovation strategies: when risk avoidance hides lost opportunities<\/h2>\n
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The acceptance of two different worlds: Coca-Cola won\u2019t be a startup soon<\/h2>\n
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