Markus Berger-de León
McKinsey commentary
Senior Partner
It’s really striking to me that about 90 percent of executives in our survey believe that they have at least one asset that they could turn into a business. That’s amazing. And it highlights how much potential there is in almost every company for building a new venture.
Of course, not everyone makes the leap from understanding that they have an asset with value to turning that into a business. In many cases, this is a perceived issue of limited money, time, and resources. But in fact, venture building often is one of the best value creation opportunities that a company has.
For those that do make the leap successfully, it starts with a venture builder that can overcome the failure of imagination. The builder has the entrepreneurial mind to look at an asset, which is often treated as a cost center, and see how it could become, at scale, a business that generates new revenue and profits for the company. Importantly, these assets already exist and are already helping the company. They’re not just vaporware.
In fact, a product or service that’s already in use to scratch an itch is a great starting point because it’s easy to show to potential customers. And while there are significant challenges in turning an asset into a successful new venture, the proliferation of technologies—from APIs to cloud services to generative AI capabilities—is making it much easier to overcome potential obstacles that could exist for externalizing an asset.