Sidebar: Start Up, Set Back

Sometimes, large organizations are less than ideal for launching a startup. Just consider two of the speed bumps that Nortel's Gord Larose and Jeff Dodge had to negotiate as they beat back the bureaucracy while building Channelware.

Lost in the Database. "I was told that I couldn't use Nortel's humongous jobs database to hire staff for Channelware. Why? Because I wasn't a hiring manager," recalls Larose. "Why wasn't I a hiring manager? Nobody reported to me. But how could I hire people to report to me unless I was allowed to use the database to hire them? There was no one who was so perverse as to defend this contradiction. It was just one of the side effects of being part of the big machine."

The Ultimate Shell Game. No exceptions were made for us when Nortel declared a hiring freeze," says Dodge. "So I formed Channelware, incorporated it under my own name as a shell company, made my hires, and ran their salaries through Nortel as a consulting expense. You do what you have to do to keep the enterprise moving forward."

Sidebar: Start Up, Shot Down

What if your company backs your big idea, and your big idea bombs? Does that mean that your career is doomed? Plenty of people at Nortel Networks have wondered about that very thing. Anshu Prasad, 28, and Jim Carew, 33, along with other Nortel employees, spent a year developing a software package, called Guru, that helps programmers debug their work. After the Business Ventures Group took a careful look at Guru, it decided that the product's market was too small. But despite devoting a year to a project that never made it to market, Prasad and Carew were able to reboot their careers at Nortel. Here are some of the reasons why.

They stepped into the spotlight. Carew got a huge charge out of appearing before the Business Ventures Group to defend Guru. "There was no other place in the company where I could have gotten the same experience," he says.

They picked up new skills. "The process of pitching Guru to the Business Ventures Group really forced us to focus on the business side and to wrestle with specific problems -- for example, where we'd sell the program and how much we'd charge for it," says Carew. "I had no formal training in business, but I suspected -- and later confirmed -- that my skills extended beyond software programming."

They took a risk -- and got a second chance. Even though the Business Ventures Group decided to drop Guru, the project helped Carew and Prasad achieve recognition throughout Nortel. Carew was offered three different promotions within the company. (He elected to make a lateral move first, so that he could pick up some new technology skills before attempting to vault the career ladder.) Prasad got job inquiries from Nortel and from other companies as well. He decided to stay put and help Nortel's biggest customers -- phone companies -- to assess new technologies.

"I understand why people might assume that there are inherent penalties for failure and that they shouldn't try anything unless success is guaranteed," says Prasad. "But our experience suggests that failure does have its own rewards."

Coordinates: Jim Carew, jcarew@nortelnetworks.com; Anshu Prasad, anshup@nortelnetworks.com