Corporate entrepreneurship is an
organizational state or supportive environment allowing innovative and
future-oriented thinking to flourish at all levels of the organization. It is
about thinking innovatively in order to act strategically and flexibly while
managing the demands and pressures experienced by the established organization.
Corporate entrepreneurship can take any organization, even the most traditional
or established, on to a new level of productivity and flexibility.
The term corporate
entrepreneurship (CE) refers to the establishment of a state or environment in
an organization that draws on the spirit of enterprise often associated with
start-up companies.
Lessons
learnt from the start-up
· Contemporary
innovation:
traditionally, entrepreneurs have been seen as “investors” who brought new
ideas to the marketplace. The evolving role of innovation encourages input from
all levels within the organization.
· Leaner/flatter/smarter: the small, flat and flexibility
of the start-up is particularly valuable in its capacity to manage, and thrive
on, change. They can respond quickly to demands for change in direction, driven
by client demand or economic and social circumstance, without losing sight of
the overall vision
· Responsive
means competitive:
start –up organisations evaluate ideas and then act up upon the evaluation,
i.e. they are astute in deploying innovative thinking via decision-making and
resource allocation
· Eye
on the future: a
proactive approach through forward thinking and anticipating the need and
demands of customers before they arise
· Clear
perception of client needs:
breaking through the parameters of current activities to deliver something new.
Several of the most innovative start-ups have created new markets, rather than
simply offer a ‘better’ version of an existing product or service.
The lessons
of innovative thinking and flexibility gather from start-ups must be balanced
by the careful encouragement, gathering and deployment of innovative thinking.
The key is
finding a balance between encouraging innovation and managing new thinking to
ensure that the overall aims and objectives of the organization are maintained.
For example, a health trust full of maverick thinking and behavior would be
inappropriate given the political and social responsibility of public sector
health organization. However, a trust entirely lacking in innovation, and
burdened by past experience, will be inefficient and slow to respond to change.
Balancing
the management of innovation for the good of the entire organization, while
maximizing the potential of the individual innovating employee, is the key to
success offered by the CE environment.
Benefit of the CE environment
CE as an
endeavor sits somewhere between change management, innovation and leadership,
and provides the potential for todays organization to constantly evolve and
adapt to changing circumstances.
The benefits
or output of CE for an organization
· The capacity to manage change affecting the
organization itself or its market environment
· The ability to make creative/
imaginative use of the resources currently held by the organization
· The ability to meet client needs
and satisfy them
· The capacity to anticipate client
needs that may not fully demonstrate as yet
· The capacity, led by the
decision-making and resource-developing manager of the organization, to weigh
risks, against potential gains generated by new thinking
The
Corporate entrepreneur
Today, the skills of the
entrepreneur are understood to stem not from a rigid set of innate traits, but
from a learning process undergone over time. CE is, therefore, also a skill set
held by the organisation’s managers that enable them to draw innovative
thinking from all employees, and to deploy it to address client needs, and to
manage the organizational environment. Creating a culture that encourages, acts
upon, and rewards innovative thinking is vital, in order to ensure that the
‘raw materials’ are available for these entrepreneurial managers. Equally,
employees must be trained in the importance of creativity and opportunity
seeking; educated as to much thinking fits within the overall organizational
cultural state of CE; and encouraged and supported in generating new and
value-adding ideas, even where managing risk is involved.
Private
vs public sector entrepreneurship
CE has adopted and adapted by the
public and private sector in subtly different ways. This difference is largely
due to the differing objectives, responsibilities and environmental pressures
experienced by organisations in these two sectors.
The corporate entrepreneur is
found in the private sectors, and use their skills to improve internal
processes, products and services to create organizational or market change that
will ultimately improve the bottom line.
The social entrepreneur transfers
the tactics, strategies and benefits of CE to the social sphere, i.e. the
public sector. The responsibility of the organization is of course social in
the first instance, and must be financially viable rather than necessarily
profit generating. Rather than being though of in purely financial terms, the
success of the social entrepreneurship endeavors is measured by the improvement
and further development of services, or the establishment of new services and
resources.
The social entrepreneur act as a
change agent within the public sector
· Working within a pre- establish
remit to create a sustainable social value
· Periodically identifying new
opportunities to support and improve services, and reviewing the underlying
social mission of the organization
·
Learning,
innovating and reviewing in constant cycle
It also important to note when
adopting CE in a public sector, leader will need to take into account the
particular environmental constraints on the sector.
CE is the practice of
establishing an entrepreneurial environment in a non start up organization;
which encourages innovation thinking across the workforce, and establishes
entrepreneurial skill sets at the managerial level in order to maximize the
potential impact of thinking. CE adds value by systematically, but creatively,
addressing change, managing future client demands, and harnessing the capacity
for innovation often already latent within the workforce.
