It is necessary for an entrepreneur to have a "harvest goal" for the purpose of enterprise growth, longevity, and stability. An example of a California firm that does appear to have engaged in a systematic approach to growth and harvesting is Polycom, Inc., which describes itself as the world's leading provider of video teleconferencing "solutions." What began with several innovative patents on equipment appropriate for setting up teleconferencing between geographically remote sites rather quickly evolved into a public offering. Since 1996, when the company went public, it has continued to enlarge its market share, by not only continuing to innovate technologically but also forming alliances with other technology companies, some of which compete with Polycom at certain levels, others of which have technology complementing Polycom's, in order to accomplish strategic and customer-service objectives.
According to Timmons and Spinelli, the harvesting process is one that exploits the established value of the enterprise and then adds value in a specific way (2004, p. 610). The original value of Polycom can be located in its video/telecom hardware patents, as born out by the apparently steady growth of the company, since 1996, when it went public at $5 per share, to the present, when its stock price is about $15--down from about $30 the previous year. Polycom's stock price has not experienced wide fluctuations in the recent past, which demonstrates the persistence of its value despite a difficult economic climate. This suggests that the demand for its services is at least steady, and the press releases of the company suggest that it is in a growth mode as of 2009.
The formation of intercompany alliances constitutes the most visible harvest strategy for Polycom, in that it is a strategy aimed at growth to back up its various claims for the benefits of its technological capacity. Certainly the practice of forming in...