Large companies like Rippling and TripActions maintain innovation velocity by creating "carved out" teams for new, "zero to one" initiatives. This organizational strategy provides singular focus, empowering a small group to execute with the intensity and speed of an early-stage startup without corporate distractions.

Adding new offerings is a smart growth strategy, but only if your primary business is stable and systemized. Launching a new service to escape existing chaos will only amplify it. Instead, treat the new offering as a separate, dedicated division to maintain focus and quality.

Don't "stuff the channel" by forcing your existing sales team to sell an acquired product with a different model. At Cisco, a usage-based product was kept separate from the enterprise sales team, who were incentivized by large deals and wouldn't have prioritized it.

It's tempting to add adjacent revenue streams like training or job boards. However, these often represent entirely new business models requiring different organizational commitments, potentially distracting you from perfecting your primary revenue engine.

A founder can only excel at one function at a time. In the beginning, it's product. Once that's solid, the focus must shift entirely to go-to-market and founder-led sales. Later, it may become finance. This is a conscious trade-off and sequential juggling act.

In a multi-product company, horizontal teams naturally prioritize mature, high-impact businesses. Structuring teams vertically with P&L ownership for each product, even nascent ones, ensures dedicated focus and accountability, preventing smaller initiatives from being starved of resources.

Afeyan advises against making breakthrough innovation everyone's responsibility, as it's unsustainable and disruptive to daily jobs. Instead, companies should create a separate group with different motivations, composition, and rewards, focused solely on discontinuous leaps.

When facing multiple promising growth opportunities, founders should avoid pursuing them all at once. Instead, sequence them by designating one channel as the primary "engine" for the next 6-18 months, treating others as mere proof points to maintain focus.

Don't expect the parent company's sales force to sell your nascent product. Their focus on core business means they will ignore emerging tech. An internal incubator must have its own dedicated go-to-market team to find new personas and develop sales plays before a handoff.