Corporate entrepreneurship: teaching managers to be entrepreneurs

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JMD22,4342entrepreneurs, with some championing at the senior level, to start to seeresults..A lot of ordinary corporate citizens can learn to act as corporateentrepreneurs with the right education, training, and support. The mostcritical piece is that they are helped to develop an idea that theythemselves are turned on to. Without this passion, it would be hard toimagine anyone willing to fight the uphill battle that many of our wouldbeentrepreneurs had to do. This really speaks to the mindset of theentrepreneur. Passion can’t be taught, but it can be encouraged. The skillset, however is much easier to teach. Market analyses, cash flow analysis,operations management etc., can be taught, as we know from workingwith MBAs and other executives..Catalytic coaching and the business planning process were the two mostimportant educational tools for the development of new businessopportunities. Catalytic coaching sounds like an oxymoron, but itinvolved pushing managers to move from an iterative focus to a platformfocus. Most managers, when asked to think about new businessopportunities, tend to start close to home with iterative, relatively smallchanges to products or services. It takes a push from a coach whoaggressively challenges this “close to home” mentality typically found inthe ideation phase. We saw many mediocre ideas blossom into trulyentrepreneurial ideas as a result of this type of coaching. In addition, thisis where some of the real passion developed within the corporateentrepreneur. They started to fall in love with their ideas, especially whenthey became really interesting and more risky. Many of Mott’s peoplestarted off with ideas about packaging and apple sauce color. At the endof the program they were thinking about day care centers and managingbrands for the World Wide Wrestling Federation, a far cry from blueapple sauce. These types of ideas are more of a platform of ideas in thatthey leverage the corporation’s capabilities, but into significantlydifferent product offerings or markets. The importance of the businessplan is obvious. Great ideas without the discipline of the businessplanning process are generally not great opportunities. This was the mostimportant tool for differentiating the two and further shaping theopportunity. One of our entrepreneurs came to us in a perturbed statebecause his business plan was telling him that he could not make anymoney with his original idea. He was afraid that he would some how “fail”the entrepreneurial course. We soundly congratulated him for notspending the company’s money on a bad idea and told him to find anotherone. This little story says a lot. Being entrepreneurial also means knowingwhen to “pull the plug”..Entrepreneurs can come from anywhere in the organization. One of ourbiggest lessons was our inability to predict who could become a corporate
entrepreneur. When experience, creativity tools, coaching, and a person’sown confidence and desire collide with market knowledge, customerintimacy information, and technological changes, entrepreneurialopportunities are identified. We could not predict with any accuracywho would be in the intersection at the right time, but providing thisintersection in a planned way did result in brand new businesses andsignificant innovation in current businesses. In addition, we could notpredict which of our would-be entrepreneurs would be motivated. OurMBA star arrived motivated, became unmotivated and then quit. Ourolder engineer arrived unmotivated, got excited and stayed. So theinteresting research question is, what are the key ingredients for causingthe right kinds of collisions at the intersection. We know some of theelements but not others..Decoupling ideation and opportunity identification from implementation.As we looked at our four companies, we discovered that some individualsreally do have the right stuff to identify, develop, and implement a newbusiness venture from start to finish. They are akin to many start-upentrepreneurs. We also encountered people who were good at the creativeopportunity identification and shaping phases, but who could not or didnot want to implement their idea. For them, the fun was in theconceptualization piece, not the implementation piece. Thus, anycorporate entrepreneurship process must first be framed around thequestion of whether a company wants to develop corporateentrepreneurship processes or corporate entrepreneurs. The processapproach means that a company does not expect the same people todevelop and then implement a new business, but they want the structuresand processes in place, which help to identify, shape, and then capture anew business opportunity. Many companies are starting to build oralready have, some form of entrepreneur process in place. Intel, Proctor &Gamble, Ford, Dow and others are exploring and testing these variousmachines of innovation. Obviously not all of these structures work(Altman, 2000) but companies seeking greater innovation are increasinglyexploring new avenues. An emphasis on identifying and supporting a“corporate entrepreneur” who is expected to follow a new opportunityfrom start to finish is a relatively new model and one that does not requirethe same investment in fixed assets. We do know that passion counts andinstitutionalized processes do not always take this into account. Perhapscompanies seeking innovation need to pursue both paths..The last lesson is that a little difference can make a big difference. Notevery manager needs be an entrepreneur to help a company spawnsignificant new business opportunities. Several of our examples,particularly the $250 million dollar one, attest to this. So companiesneed to be realistic about how much corporate entrepreneurship isCorporateentrepreneurship343
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