Corporate entrepreneurship: teaching managers to be entrepreneurs

an opportunity that his competitors have missed? Thus the idea of corporateentrepreneurship has a certain cache that is hard to resist.But what is the reality? Can corporate entrepreneurship really be instilledinto a bureaucratic culture? How different are corporate entrepreneurs fromexternal entrepreneurs, and how well does the entrepreneurial mindset fitwithin a hierarchical corporate structure? There are few empirical answers tothese questions. The literature abounds with examples, but unfortunately theexamples often revolve around a few high profile examples like 3M, andDisney. These companies have had long histories of innovation andopportunity focus as cultural values, and have had numerous processes thatinstitutionalized these values (Greco, 1999; Roepke et al., 2000; Schrage, 1999).There is relatively little field research regarding the successes or failures oflarge companies who have tried to systematically instill corporateentrepreneurship within their walls.The purpose of this paper, then, is to discuss the results and lessons learnedfrom field research involving the attempt to create internal or corporateentrepreneurship within four large companies –Siemens-Nixdorf, Colonia-AxaInsurance, the Venezuelan Oil Company (PDVSA), and Mott’s (a part ofCadbury Schweppes) – struggling to be more innovative. Two of theseorganizations favored a corporate venturing approach, while the other twofollowed more of an intrapreneuring approach.Corporateentrepreneurship333BackgroundCorporate venturingBoth Siemens-Nixdorf Information Systems Company (SNI) and Mott’sfollowed a corporate venturing path.SNI came to Babson College in 1995 with an RFP to create a managementeducation program for its unit managers. The main purpose of the programwas to create a group of 300 corporate entrepreneurs within SNI who wouldlearn to be opportunity-focused, not just resource-focused. GerhardSchulmeyer, President of SNI, had embarked on an organization-wide changeprogram to turn a rather staid, conservative, risk-averse culture into a moreopportunistic, market-focused, fast, flexible organization in order to competemore effectively with the likes of H-P, IBM, Arthur Anderson, and the smallaggressive boutique IT vendors increasingly present in the marketplace.Both SNI and Mott’s followed a corporate venturing path.Schulmeyer had already brought in new board members from the outside,and was involved in a number of internal change efforts when Babson Collegewas approached to design and deliver the corporate entrepreneurship program.The entrepreneurial development program was considered a cornerstone inSNI’s change efforts because it was meant to make corporate entrepreneurs outof managers who had just been assigned to the newly-created position of unitmanager. The unit manager’s job sat at the intersection between the the line of