Fortune · 21 Sep, 09:00 · Business briefing

McKinsey partners: you need to protect successful new ventures from the core business

McKinsey & Company advises that organisations must actively shield promising new ventures from the dominant influence of their established core businesses.

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The briefing

The story
in brief.

What happened, who it affects, and why it landed on our intelligence desk — in plain English, sixty seconds or less.

McKinsey & Company advises that organisations must actively shield promising new ventures from the dominant influence of their established core businesses. The firm argues that internal cultural and operational pressures often stifle innovation, causing new initiatives to fail before they gain traction. Successful transformation requires creating distinct structures and processes that allow these ventures to operate independently. This approach prevents legacy mindsets from overriding the agility and risk-taking necessary for emerging projects to succeed and scale effectively within the broader corporate ecosystem.

Employer demand for Innovation skills — indexed growth since 2019
Indicative index of skill mentions in professional job postings for the field this story moves (2019 = 1)

Your move

What this means
for your career.

Every headline redistributes opportunity. Here is who this one rewards — and how to be on the right side of it.

You must now master the art of organisational design and strategic separation. Professionals who understand how to isolate innovation units from legacy bureaucracy will become indispensable. Focus on developing skills in change management and intrapreneurship to navigate these dual structures effectively. If you lead new initiatives, advocate for autonomous operating models to protect your team’s agility. Study corporate venturing strategies to identify where your organisation might be suffocating growth. Prioritise learning how to balance integration with independence. Smart professionals will position themselves as bridges between core stability and venture dynamism, ensuring new ideas survive the transition from pilot to scale without losing their innovative edge.

For this story, the fields that convert it into pay are Innovation, Project Management, Leadership and Business And Management — exactly the programmes matched below. The chart shows the indicative salary uplift certified professionals report in each of those fields; every one of them is a click away, from £79, finishing in as few as 20 days.

Indicative salary uplift in the fields matched to this story
Indicative ranges from published continuing-education salary studies, by field — each field is a recommended course below

Matched to this story

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