CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Definition of Entrepreneurship:

Corporate entrepreneurship is the process of profitably creating innovation within an organizational setting. Corporate entrepreneurship is the involvement of the employees of a firm in inventions and Innovations of new ideas towards the development of the organization. The term corporate entrepreneurship can also be described as intrapreneuship.

Reasons Why A Company Should Encourage Intrapreneuship:

Corporate entreprenship is very important in every organization and every organization should encourage this concept for the following reasons;

1. To enable the company or organisation compete with new sophisticated competitors. The presence of intrapreneurs who consistently innovate, create and develop new ideas for the company allows the company to engage in healthy competition with similar companies in the industry.

2. People have a sense of distrust in the traditional corporate management. It is therefore important for a company to encourage intrapreneurship so that interpreneurs can build a new working model that will be comfortable and suitable for all staffs of the firm and all those in charge of decision making can take the responsibility for their actions solely.

3. Some of the best and brightest people leave their organisations to become small business entrepreneurs. When a company does not encourage intrapreneurship, their staffs become tired of the routine and inability to be creative and make decisions on their own. They tend to opt out of the job and create or start their own small business. It is therefore important for a company to encourage intrapreneurship in order to retain the best and capable hands that are working for them.

How An Organization Can Encourage Intrapreneuship:

MANAGEMENT SUPPORT

This is the extent to which the management structure itself encourages employees to believe that innovation is, in fact, part of the role set for all organization members. Some of the specific conditions that reflect management support include quick adoption of employee ideas, recognition of people who bring ideas forward, support for small experimental projects, and seed money to get projects off the ground.

AUTONOMY/WORK DISCRETION

Workers have discretion to the extent that they are able to make decisions about performing their own work in the way they believe is most effective. Organizations should allow employees to make decisions about their work process and should avoid criticizing them for making mistakes when innovating.

REWARDS/REINFORCEMENT

Rewards and reinforcement enhance the motivation of individuals to engage in innovative behavior. Organizations must be characterized by providing rewards contingent on performance, providing challenges, increasing responsibilities, and making the ideas of innovative people known to others in the organizational hierarchy.

TIME AVAILABILITY

The fostering of new and innovative ideas requires that individuals have time to incubate these ideas. Organizations must moderate the workload of people, avoid putting time constraints on all aspects of a person’s job, and allow people to work with others on long-term problem solving.

ORGANIZATIONAL BOUNDARIES

These boundaries, real and imagined, prevent people from looking at problems outside their own jobs. People must be encouraged to look at the organization from a broad perspective. Organizations should avoid having standard operating procedures for all major parts of jobs, and should reduce dependence on narrow job descriptions and rigid performance standards.