Disrupting the Status Quo

When Adriane Brown left her position as president and CEO of Honeywell’s transportation division in August 2009, she had spent most of her career in the highly structured, integrated corporate world–in companies that had long histories and specific operating cultures for performance. But when the prospect of working for a small private firm was presented to Brown, she felt that by taking the position she’d not only use the best of what she had learned as a corporate executive, but she’d also get to stretch and develop as a leader.

“What drew me to Intellectual Ventures after 30 years in a corporate environment was my thirst for demonstrating and finding the energy and excitement that come from walking in unfamiliar places and doing new things,” she explains. “It’s perhaps a fearlessness, the thrill of the challenge that makes these new opportunities and adventures possible.”

Founded in 2000 by three technology professionals and an attorney, Intellectual Ventures is a patent portfolio and licensing company that supports inventions through research, funding, and partnerships in a variety of areas including technology, medicine, automotive, energy, communications, and security. Today it is a global company with roughly 825 employees. Its work has

drawn fiery criticism in recent years from software firms, watchdog organizations, economists, and others as taking a predatory approach in the acquisition  of patents. Yet its client base and revenues continue to grow. It lists more than 30 licensing customers and $2 billion in cumulative licensing revenue.

Brown believes that controversy in business is a natural course for untraditional companies. “I recognized that IV was controversial,” she offers, “but I also felt the integrity of what we were trying to do. I’m on the inside, so I know exactly what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. I see our customers, I see our investors, and I see the kinds of solutions that we’re bringing to the marketplace and I’m OK with that.” Here Brown discusses how she’s managed transitional challenges and how she keeps her team and the company on track.

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What has the transition to a private company been like?
What I found interesting was people didn’t want me to do things because that’s the way corporations do them. I could take the principles, but I had to let it take its own path here. And so I love the fact that I don’t have to do things by rote. I had to make it our own.

Would you give an example?
I have had corporate town halls for years, and after I talked with one of my colleagues he shared with me that it could have been any company’s name on the door. What we needed was something that was cooler, quirkier, something that was a little bit challenging. That moment really solidified for me this notion of not taking things for granted, but to make it fit our culture, to make it fit our unique gathering of talent, and make it work for my new company. If you’re not willing to listen and hear, you can sometimes miss those little things that help employees understand that you are part of their world–instead of making them part of mine.

How has your role here evolved?
When I first came to Intellectual Ventures, the leadership team and I talked about the fact that we needed to have a stronger sense of our operation cadence. So I established a management operating system and things were starting to run smoothly. In this more entrepreneurial environment I have brought a good level of

mastery to the COO part of my job. I’m now leaning more heavily on the president side of my job. I can step away from the day-to-day things and think broadly about some of the more strategic challenges and be that guidepost and strong piece of steel that goes down the back of the organization, versus being the glue.

That seems like a delicate balance. How do you figure it out?
For me it starts with how I set my personal goals for the operation. What the organization needed most when I started was the operational cadence to drive results and ensure that we were delivering on our commitments to our investors. Now that we have a real strength having gone through two calendar years, what does the organization need to take us to the next level? The pace is very fast. Agility is important.

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Many leaders talk about the importance of agility, but it doesn’t seem easy to manage for most organizations.
Change management is necessary. And I’m not talking about the function of an organization–I’m talking about a mindset, a willingness to change. But you cannot change without communication. It’s about talking to people, it’s about engaging. During the course of the year, we know there are things that will happen that we cannot contemplate today. It’s important as our priorities shift that we change the goals and are willing to substitute that which we said we were going to do–once we all buy into it so that the organization can keep the accountability culture, but at the same time be responsible to the things we now know to do. It’s hard to have agility and accountability at the same time and not have them conflict, but it’s possible.

What happens when you make a wrong turn?
I always say, “We’re gonna make mistakes.” Risk management means you don’t do it in isolation. You establish what you’re trying to do, what you think the risks are–and you stay close enough to it so if you have to retreat or make a change you actually have not surprised anyone with the outcome. It’s important that this notion of agility and risk taking is one in which you learn the lesson and then move on. But if your organization can’t fail in a reasonable way, it will be stuck.