All things being equal, the entrepreneur who launches a successful, VC-backed business will almost always come out ahead of the intrapreneur who builds a startup from within a larger company. But that doesn't mean the intrapreneur won't make good money. In Nortel's case, people who lead in-house startups earn their regular salary, plus a bonus every six months -- if they nail certain milestones. (Those bonuses can be twice as much as the average Nortel perk.)

When a company like Channelware is spun off, a second plan kicks in. Nortel did some benchmarking against other corporate venture programs and decided to apportion 15% to 30% of the company to the startup team. Dodge and his group had raised additional venture capital as Channelware was spun off, which diluted their stake: Nortel owns 44% of Channelware, Channelware's employees own about 20%, and various investors own the rest.

So did Dodge, who got a 3% stake in the company, miss out on a huge payoff? "Jeff did suffer a bit financially, and he regularly reminds us of that," says Horne, laughing. "But had he and Gord started Channelware in a garage, they wouldn't have earned a dime until someone agreed to fund their idea. And for the first couple of years, they'd have made only about 75% of what they were earning at Nortel." Then maybe they'd have had a one-in-a-hundred chance of hitting IPO pay dirt.

When Dodge compares that potential scenario with the situation that he's in today, he says he can't complain. "I'd much rather own a small percentage of a big thing," says Nortel's most successful intrapreneur, "than a big percentage of a small thing."

Ron Lieber (rlieber@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company senior writer.

Action Item: Start Me Up

Transforming a good idea into a real business requires you to zero in on a multitude of operational details, without losing sight of the big picture. And that's where "The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management" comes in.

Using checklists, worksheets, and other aids, author Eric Verzuh, president of Versatile Co., a project-management consulting firm in Seattle, takes you through each step of the startup process, helping you make sure that your big idea gets on track -- and stays there.

Coordinates: $16.95. "The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management," John Wiley & Sons, www.wiley.com

Sidebar: The Skunk Works Starts Up

Before the startup, there's the "skunk works." The term dates back to the 1940s, when a small group of engineers at Lockheed Martin developed the first jet fighter, according to Jay Miller's exhaustive book, Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works. The engineers were fans of the "Li'l Abner" comic strip, which featured a notorious brewery called the "Skonk Works." Since the jet-fighter project was kept secret, the engineers would often answer their phones by announcing that callers had reached the Skonk Works. The name stuck, and the spelling changed several years later.

A trailblazing team within Lockheed was responsible for rapidly assembling aircraft prototypes from scratch, and department founder Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson developed a remarkably forward-looking set of guidelines for getting work done. Here are three of Kelly's original rules for moving skunk-works projects ahead:

Multitask Like Hell. Each engineer on this project shall be designer, shop contact, parts chaser, and mechanic, as the occasion demands.

Make the Process Transparent. Individual managers must have access to all plans and schedules, and must understand how their part contributes to the whole program.

Blow Up the Bureaucracy. A purchasing setup, working directly for this project and no other, shall be made. It will operate without the usual red tape and policy encumbrances. Keynote: Get the stuff.

Coordinates: $29.95. "Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works: The Official History ...," Midland Publishing

Sidebar: Talk Like a VC

Venture capitalists remain the most experienced evaluators of big, new ideas. What must you do to win over the VC types at your company?

We asked Dan Beldy, 34, a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, which invests in companies like AdForce, Liquid Audio, the Knot, and Pets.com.

Don't Do This: "People write up their business plan with a top-down mentality. They invariably talk about a particular vertical market that has X billions of dollars in sales each year. They'll tell us that they can get 10% of that market. But when we ask them for the average sale or the cost of customer acquisition, the answer almost always is 'I'll get back to you.' "

Do This: "Entrepreneurs have got to display a clearly articulated vision for what they want to do. And they must tell their story from the bottom up. A bottom-up approach means that they know with absolute certainty whom they'll sell to, how much it will cost, and what the sales per week will be next March. Sure, a lot of assumptions are involved, but entrepreneurs need to break their business down to the molecular level. That information leads logically to the next step, which is saying to an investor, 'I am going to take this money and do X, Y, and Z with it, and here's what will happen in the end.' Your survival depends on knowing that stuff cold."

Coordinates: Dan Beldy, dbeldy@humwin.com