“TO become a bigger company, we need to try something new”, Yamaha Motor’s chief executive Hiroyuki Yanagi told the FT recently. The novelty in question is a two-seater ‘city car’, cleaner and more fuel-efficient than existing vehicles, that the motorcycle manufacturer could launch in 2019.

The suggestion seems to have upset analysts. They worry Yamaha Motor will neglect its core business, struggle to compete in a market crowded with tiny two-seater commuter cars, or fail to build a viable sales network.

But in a world where a six-year-old taxi-hailing service and a 17-year-old search engine company seem to be going into competition to develop driver-less cars, it does not seem a great leap to imagine a motorbike specialist with six decades of experience transferring its skills from two- to four-wheelers. In fact, looking at the history of Yamaha Motor, puttering over to the adjacent neighbourhood is hardly an epic journey. If anything, its goal may be overly conservative.

Expansion is often a fight between sprawl and focus. When something goes wrong at large global companies — as, most recently, at HSBC — lack of control is often the culprit. More insidiously, big companies’ inability to kill off unpromising projects can blight the whole group.

But fear of flying can also ground entrepreneurial ideas for growth. Executives’ concerns about the brand being diluted or managers being distracted can stifle expansion into new areas, until an Uber or a Google comes along and does what the incumbents either did not think, or, worse, did not dare, to attempt.

Fear of flying can also ground entrepreneurial ideas for growth. Executives’ concerns about the brand being diluted or managers being distracted can stifle expansion into new areas

Yamaha Motor’s range has grown over time to embrace jet-skis, motorboats, unmanned helicopters, wheelchairs and snow-clearers. Each line of business leads from another, with the group’s engine expertise at the top of the family tree of products. Its swimming pool division looks like the odd one out, until you think of a pool as simply a boat with the water on the inside. Pools exploit Yamaha Motor’s mastery of fibreglass-reinforced plastic, which itself grew out of its hull-making technology.

It is true that the group’s earlier efforts to develop four-wheelers foundered on lack of demand, first in the 1960s, when it entered a sports car partnership with Toyota, then, 25 years later, when it designed then scrapped a supercar. But the biggest threat to its third-time-lucky tilt at the market is not the uncertain appetite of customers or the jam of tiny little cars already queueing to get in, but the fact the chief executive is in the driving seat.

Innovations often gain strength away from the oversight of senior managers, or even in direct contravention of their orders: Shuji Nakamura, who shared the 2014 Nobel Prize for physics, invented the high-brightness, blue light-emitting diode despite a direct order from his corporate bosses to stop working on the project.

A less extreme phenomenon affects new lines of business, according to Robert Burgelman, the Stanford strategy professor, who has studied large companies such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard. He points out how many promising new businesses develop almost inadvertently within the corporate structure.

HP’s networking business, for instance, took off when a bored young engineering manager started ‘digging around for something else to do’. It grew, then was disbanded, re-emerged as a profitable line, and was put on the block by Carly Fiorina (to avoid upsetting relations with Cisco, then a partner). Networking was finally reprieved by her successor as chief executive, who established it as an important part of the group.

Strategies for new business areas must combine bottom-up entrepreneurial spark and top-down recognition, allowing the business as a whole to evolve. “The genius part is not having the CEO drive this process,” Prof Burgelman told me. “The genius is in resolving some of this uncertainty, and having some evidence that [the new business] can actually work.”

The recent record of cars made by companies that were not already carmakers — including unlikely marques such as Kalashnikov, Messerschmitt and Sears — is patchy to say the least. But as engines get smaller, and car bodies lighter, the gap between Yamaha Motor’s history in motorbikes and its possible future in cars must narrow. Provided Mr Yanagi maintains a light touch on the steering-wheel, his chance of reaching a new destination should improve.

Published in Dawn, Economic & Business, March 30th , 2015

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