Actually, this is what acquihires are great at. An interesting article recently about eBay's turnaround and how CEO John Donahoe started acquiring startups to drive innovation with talent they can't simply hire or grow internally. http://www.businessinsider.com/explaining-ebays-turnaround-2...
> But beyond the tactics, Donahoe realized there was a deeper issue bedeviling eBay. It had stopped innovating. [...] eBay also had a problem attracting and retaining innovative, entrepreneurial people into its executive ranks ...
> Andreessen’s second theory of innovation is that the people who are the very best at it are the people who create successful technology companies — founders. They are the people who have a proven ability to develop a concept and bring it to fruition.
> For this reason, Andreessen believes that tech companies should be run by their founders.
> The problem for eBay is that its founder, Pierre Omidyar, had no interest in running it. And Donahoe, a talented manager, had the wisdom to know he was not the kind of visionary who could found an innovative tech company.
> So he decided he was going to have to go after the next best thing. He was going to have to build a team of founders, or founder-types, and give them the run of the place.
> But beyond the tactics, Donahoe realized there was a deeper issue bedeviling eBay. It had stopped innovating. [...] eBay also had a problem attracting and retaining innovative, entrepreneurial people into its executive ranks ...
> Andreessen’s second theory of innovation is that the people who are the very best at it are the people who create successful technology companies — founders. They are the people who have a proven ability to develop a concept and bring it to fruition.
> For this reason, Andreessen believes that tech companies should be run by their founders.
> The problem for eBay is that its founder, Pierre Omidyar, had no interest in running it. And Donahoe, a talented manager, had the wisdom to know he was not the kind of visionary who could found an innovative tech company.
> So he decided he was going to have to go after the next best thing. He was going to have to build a team of founders, or founder-types, and give them the run of the place.