Internal Entrepreneurs – Accelerating Growth

by: Susan Foley - February 22nd, 2011   Filed under: Business Growth, Corporate Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Leaders, Internal Entrepreneurs, Intrapreneurs 2 Comments

Acceleration – Changing the Speed of Growth

According to research only four percent of executives in large organizations are entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial. The lack of  entrepreneurial role models at the top of most organizations is stifling innovation and growth. But…

Entrepreneurial leadership alone is not enough.

Many of the systems, processes, and practices needed to support the core business are just the opposite of what is needed to support new growth businesses creating barriers to success.  Organizational cultures and resistance to change are holding back efforts to engage professionals in meaningful work that is challenging and rewarding.  All of these things are marginalizing innovation efforts and creating roadblocks to growth.

Plus the rapid pace of change is making acceleration a critical part of everything we do.  Like a runner it is not enough to be running fast, you must be running faster over time.  The same is true for organizations – they need to be moving faster in a world that is increasingly more complex and uncertain.  But you need more than speed to succeed.

Organizations that want to increase the speed in which they respond to change and achieve business growth will need to develop ‘entrepreneurship‘ as a core competency.  The key is developing both the entrepreneurial leadership and infrastructure for accelerating growth. 

Acceleration – Changing the Speed of Growth provides an insider’s view of entrepreneurship and three things you can do to accelerate growth – activate your people, renovate key processes, and transform your culture.  It’s more ART than science! 

Start with your internal entrepreneurs - they have what it takes to activate growth.

Acceleration Part 1: Activation – entrepreneurs and leaders that possess a core set of action oriented competencies that enable them to accelerate growth in their organizations. To download a copy go to: www.corporate-entrepreneurs.com/Acceleration.html.  See if you have what it takes to activate growth.  Until you read it you won’t know.

In Part 2: Renovation we will look at the systems and processes that support entrepreneurial thinking and action.  In Part 3: Transformation we will look at building an environment that is conducive to entrepreneurship, learning and growth.

As organizations begin to see the value of developing ‘entrepreneurship’ as a core competency, there is growing recognition that internal entrepreneurs are a key factor for organizational growth.

Internal Entrepreneurs – Competitive or Collaborative

by: Susan Foley - February 10th, 2011   Filed under: collaboration, Competitive, Core Competencies, Internal Entrepreneurs Add Comment

The recent passing of Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment reminded me about the unique culture that he put in place. He built an environment that was both competitive and collaborative. Ken knew that a certain degree of competitiveness was healthy in an organization. He also knew that being collaborative was a key ingredient for getting things done across organizational boundaries.

Although many Digital employees thought that the competitive environment was unhealthy there were others that felt that it inspired and motivated them to achieve things beyond their expectations. 

In our research we found that internal entrepreneurs are both collaborative and competitive.  They are highly collaborative when they were working in their teams. They are collaborative to a point when working across the organization. They told us that at some point you have to move on, you can’t wait any longer. Their competitive nature would eventually kick in.  They had to keep things moving.

As a way to keep the competitive spirit going, Digital set up the New Ventures group to nurture and develop new innovations. It made sense to set up a group where new ideas and niche products had a chance of seeing the light of day. Even if some of them were competitive products.

Around that time we started building a new imaging system for the insurance industry. One day my boss Sandy handed me an email from Ken asking him why our group was building another imaging system when the company had already invested millions to build the existing one. I knew from the look on his face, that I was the one that would have to respond to Ken. There was a sense of urgency in my boss’s directive to respond quickly and succinctly. The truth was that the existing system was not designed to handle the volume of claims that the insurance industry needed.  So that’s all I said in my email to Ken.  It didn’t take long before I got a response, one word – proceed.

Internal entrepreneurs aren’t always so lucky to get a positive nod to go ahead with their projects.  Although we were building a competitive product inside the company, it solved a problem that our customers required. The project was moved into the New Ventures group where it got the care and feeding it needed to be developed and launched successfully into the market. Being competitive worked in this case.  It doesn’t always.

Like internal entrepreneurs, organizations must find the right balance between collaboration and competitiveness.