\\ 24 7. The Golden Fields of Innovation In summary, the quest to reach the golden fields of innovation — that is, to successfully deploy new capabilities and technologies into the enterprise — is a journey that requires strategy, careful planning and consistent execution. Once that early execution is successful, this is not a one-time quest. It’s an ongoing journey with each new partner, and each new use case and product line. An early success lays the groundwork for a strong customer reference that will help generate new business — in today’s age of connectedness and transparency, a startup’s best salespeople are its happy customers. Building strong partnerships and capabilities means that getting out of the marketing swamp, through the winds of cost and risk, across the enterprise feasibility gap, through the desert of procurement and over the ocean of early execution — will all be more tenable the second time around, and the rewards even richer on both sides. Our portfolio CEOs and enterprise executive partners realize this is a challenging journey, where the key is finding the right partners and investing in relationships and shared vision. Startups Serving The Enterprise