Corporate Entrepreneurship: How to Create a Thriving Entrepreneurial Spirit Throughout Your Company

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As you're putting your finishing touches on your next annual plan, be prepared for the same old, same old clichés cloaked as wisdom: --Board Member: "We need more innovation. Just do it!" --Major Donor: "Your programs are boring. Go hire some entrepreneurs!" --Young Bucks: "We have a cool idea, but we need $50,000."Maybe you cringe when someone plays the entrepreneurship card on your desk. Maybe you even have a tough time spelling the word. But more than likely, an entrepreneurial spirit in your organization could help--but who has time? And what if yet one more product, program or service falls flat on its face?There's help. Comprehensive help. Bob Hisrich, a world class entrepreneurial thinker, practitioner and professor, has added another brilliant resource to the literature. This book-as-toolbox has it all.You certainly know the classic story of the accidental invention of the 3M Post-it Notes. Fiddling with a failed adhesive in 1968, Art Fry tried it on his church choir music and bingo--"today, Post-its are in over 100 countries, in 8 standard sizes, 25 shapes and 60 colors."Fry benefitted from 3M's Bootlegger Rule, which "allows researchers to devote 15 percent of their work time to `pursue unique ideas they believe might have merit for the company.'" (How can you not appreciate one of 3M's core values: "Innovation: thou shalt not kill a new product idea.")To stimulate innovation, Southwest Airlines once gathered employees from every area of the company and the group met for 10 hours per week for six months. The result: 109 ideas were brought to senior management, including three major innovations that streamlined operations.A few pages into "Corporate Entrepreneurship," you'll get tired, then hopeful, then more tired, then inspired, and finally (my bet) you'll activate a disciplined process for becoming more entrepreneurial. (It's harder than it looks, but with Hisrich's help, the path is genuinely clear.)There are nine key essentials to achieving ownership of the vision for creating an entrepreneurial spirit. Number 2: "Experimentation--trial and error--is encouraged." You must allow mistakes and failures. Number 6: "...entrepreneurship cannot be forced on individuals; it must be on a volunteer basis and cultivated."Creativity--no surprise--is a critical ingredient of creating an entrepreneurial spirit and the book lists eight problem-solving techniques, with short descriptions, including: brainstorming, reverse brainstorming, checklist method, free association, collective notebook method, attribute listing, big-dream approach, and parameter analysis. For reverse brainstorming, "criticism is allowed. In fact, the technique is based on finding fault by asking the question, "In how many ways can this idea fail?" (Raise your hand if you've used all eight techniques.)Hisrich, who has authored or coauthored 26 books and more than 350 articles on entrepreneurship, is the Professor of Global Entrepreneurship and Director of the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management in the Phoenix area. (Claudine Kearney, a visiting researcher at Thunderbird, is his co-author.)Hisrich knows entrepreneurship and is also a friend of nonprofit organizations and ministries. I had the privilege of co-authoring Marketing Your Ministry: Ten Critical Principles, with Dr. Hisrich in 1990. I have also recommended his 602-page book, Entrepreneurship, featuring 17 case studies.Flop of the Month Award. It's unlikely that you'll fast-track your way into an entrepreneurial culture, but you can begin--with the dozens and dozens of comprehensive lists, checklists, concepts and add-water-and-stir ideas. Example: In seeking to build a core value for the "tolerance of mistakes," (nine markers for entrepreneurial cultures), "BMW has a `successful failures' program that awards employees whose innovative ideas fail during implementation by giving a `flop of the month' award."In the very practical chapter on "Locating the Venture in the Organization," the author lists 14 indicators of a corporate entrepreneurship climate, including: "self-selection, no handoffs, failures allowed, no home-run philosophy, tolerance of risk, failure and mistakes, and patient money."There are plenty of full-page hit-you-in-the-gut charts comparing the typical bureaucracy to a true entrepreneurial climate. Guess the title of these behaviors: "Centralization, Autocratic, Inflexible--discretion not permitted, Formal, Emphasis on conformity, Risk Adverse."There is no entrepreneurial pie-in-the-sky stuff here. The pragmatic role of politics, and how thoughtful entrepreneurs build paths to success, is addressed with interesting approaches including the art of "bee stinging" (as in "stinging" those team members "most likely to support the new idea before rolling it out to all top management members").Peter Drucker said, "People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year." This book will give you courage and a disciplined process for making mistakes on your path to long-term, innovative sustainability.

I can't clearly find the difference between just entrepreneurship and corporate entrepreneurship from this book!

Gives a good outline of the do's and don'ts in maneuvering the corporate politics when driving an agenda