Corporate Entrepreneurship: How to Create a Thriving Entrepreneurial Spirit Throughout Your Company / Edition 1

by Robert D. Hisrich, Claudine Kearney

Overview

Beat the competition with INTERNAL INNOVATION

If 3M’s corporate leadership hadn’t given researcher Art Fry a creative outlet, the world would never have seen the Post-it Note . . .

Corporate entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, mavericks. No matter what name they go by, these innovators are the pioneering forces within an organization who spark new enterprises, products, services, and processes to combat increased global competition.

Corporate Entrepreneurship shows you how to develop and grow your organization by designing the culture, structure, strategies, and policies that encourage and support internal entrepreneurial ventures. Bestselling author and world-renowned entrepreneur Robert Hisrich teams up with global management expert Claudine Kearney to provide action plans, techniques, and insights for establishing an organizational culture that allows intrapreneurs to develop the entrepreneurial ventures that will secure value and generate new growth in your company.

Every day, globalization and technological advancements continue to put more of your competitors within reach of your customers. In order for your company to stay attractive and thrive, you need the proven tools and tactics in this book to:

• Identify, evaluate, and fund venture opportunities
• Recognize bright corporate entrepreneurs and create their compensation plans
• Create business plans that avoid failure, optimize success, and develop and sustain corporate venturing
• Manage the internal politics of venturing
• Effectively implement corporate venturing into your organization

Hisrich uses illustrative examples from his experience consulting for such global companies as 3M, Alcoa, Westinghouse, Citi, and many others. Through informative, well-researched case studies, he demonstrates how his concepts help companies prosper over the long run, gain market share, and stay on the cutting edge of their potential.

If your employees aren’t innovating, your company is losing its competitive edge. Use Corporate Entrepreneurship to give your mavericks what they need to keep your company on top—all over the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780071763165
Publisher:	McGraw Hill LLC
Publication date:	08/17/2011
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Robert D. Hisrich, Ph.D., is the Garvin Professor of Global Entrepreneurship and director of the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management. He has authored or coauthored 26 books and more than 350 articles on entrepreneurship.
Claudine Kearney, Ph.D., is a visiting researcher in entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management. She has extensive lecturing and research experience and has published numerous articles and book chapters on aspects of entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, and public-sector entrepreneurship.

Read an Excerpt

Corporate Entrepreneurship

How to Create a Thriving Entrepreneurial Spirit Throughout Your Company

---

By ROBERT D. HISRICH, CLAUDINE KEARNEY

The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Copyright © 2012Robert D. Hisrich and Claudine Kearney
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-07-176316-5

---

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

Entrepreneurship and Corporate Entrepreneurship

What is meant by the term corporate entrepreneurship? What are the similarities and differences between private, corporate, and social entrepreneurs/entrepreneurship? How does an entrepreneur differ from a manager? What is the entrepreneurial process in a private, corporate, and social context? To what extent does this context influence the entrepreneurial process?

Introduction

As organizations, industries, and consumers become more dynamic, corporate entrepreneurship becomes more important. While entrepreneurship has traditionally been viewed as a private sector phenomenon, corporate and social entrepreneurship have developed in a number of different domains such as not-for-profits, for-profits, and public sector organizations. Entrepreneurship is a universal concept and can be applied in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), large national and multinational organizations, as well as in social ventures, enterprises, communities, and governments. Entrepreneurship is not limited to a select group of people; any person with the right mindset, drive, and motivation can develop an entrepreneurial perspective. This perspective identifies a need and transforms it from a creative and innovative idea into reality.

In most industries, nations, and markets, entrepreneurs challenge existing assumptions and look to generate value in more innovative and creative ways. Entrepreneurs change the way business is conducted by identifying opportunities and successfully filling them. Organizations need to renew themselves in order to sustain competitiveness. This can take such forms as championing innovative ideas, providing necessary resources or expertise, or institutionalizing the entrepreneurial activity within the organization's systems and processes.

This chapter develops an understanding of the historical perspectives on entrepreneurship by analyzing the concept of private entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, and social entrepreneurship. The nature of the entrepreneurial process is then explored along with how it applies within established organizations. Entrepreneurship is a unifying framework for successful management practices that can be achieved by combining the key roles of managers and entrepreneurs. The chapter concludes by introducing the overall framework of this book.

An Overview of Entrepreneurship

The term entrepreneurship means different things to different individuals. Even though entrepreneurship has come into its own as an area of study, there remain several questions: Who is an entrepreneur? What is entrepreneurship? What is corporate entrepreneurship? What is social entrepreneurship? What is the entrepreneurial process? These frequently asked questions reflect the increased national and international interest in entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship by individuals, groups, academics, students, and government officials. The development of the theory of entrepreneurship parallels to a great extent the development of the term itself. The word entrepreneur is French and, literally translated, means "between-taker" or "go-between."

The Entrepreneur and Entrepreneurship

An early definition and example of an entrepreneur as a go-between is Marco Polo, who attempted to establish trade routes to the Far East. In the Middle Ages, the term entrepreneur was used to describe both an actor and a person who managed large production projects. For example, a person in charge of architectural works, such as castles, public buildings, and cathedrals, was considered the entrepreneur. In such large production projects, this individual did not take any risks but rather managed the project using the resources provided by the government of the country.

In the seventeenth century, an entrepreneur was a person who entered into a contractual arrangement with the government to perform a service or to supply stipulated products. For example, John Law, a Frenchman, was allowed to establish a royal bank. This monopoly on French trade led to Law's downfall when he attempted to push the company's stock price higher than the value of its assets, leading to the collapse of the company. Richard Cantillon, a noted economist and author in the 1700s, developed one of the early theories of the entrepreneur and is regarded by some as the founder of the term. He described the entrepreneur as a rational decision maker who assumed the risk and provided management for the firm. He viewed the entrepreneur as a risk taker.

In the eighteenth century, the entrepreneur was distinguished from the capital provider. Many of the inventions developed during this time were reactions to the needs of the changing world, as was the case with the inventions of Eli Whitney and Thomas Edison. These inventors were developing new technologies but were unable to finance their inventions themselves. Whereas Whitney financed his cotton gin with expropriated British crown property, Edison raised capital from private sources to develop and experiment in the fields of electricity and chemistry. Both Edison and Whitney were capital users (entrepreneurs), not capital providers.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, entrepreneurs were frequently not distinguished from managers and were viewed mostly from an economic perspective. English philosopher John Stuart Mill believed that the key factor in distinguishing a manager from an entrepreneur was the bearing of risk. An example of this type of entrepreneur is Andrew Carnegie, who invented nothing but rather adapted and developed new technology in the creation of products to achieve economic vitality in the steel industry. In the middle of the twentieth century, the notion of an entrepreneur as an innovator was established along with a more refined definition. The function of the entrepreneur was to reform the pattern of production by exploiting an invention; developing a new technological method of producing a new or old product; opening a new source of material supply or a new outlet for products; or organizing a new industry.

The concept of innovation and newness became an integral part of entrepreneurship in the mid-twentieth century. Innovation, the act of introducing something new and relevant, is one of the most difficult tasks for the entrepreneur. It takes not only the ability to create and conceptualize, but also the ability to understand all the forces at work in the environment. The newness can consist of anything from a new product to a new distribution system to a method for developing a new organizational structure. Examples of these entrepreneurs include Edward Harriman, a railroad investor who bought underperforming railroads such as Lake Ontario Southern Railroad and poured money into them to make them more efficient and profitable, and John Pierpont Morgan, who developed his large banking house by reorganizing and financing industries.

Entrepreneurship Today

The term entrepreneurship has historically referred to the efforts of an individual who takes on the odds in translating a vision into a successful business enterprise. While some definitions focus on the creation of new organizations, others focus on wealth creation and ownership. This includes other routes to ownership such as franchising, corporate entrepreneurship, management buyouts, and business inheritance. Still others focus on discovering and exploiting opportunities. The concept of an entrepreneur is further refined through the principles and terms from a business, managerial, and personal perspective. In particular, the concept of entrepreneurship from a personal perspective has been thorou
(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Corporate Entrepreneurship by ROBERT D. HISRICH. Copyright © 2012 by Robert D. Hisrich and Claudine Kearney. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Entrepreneurship versus Intrapreneurship (Corporate Entrepreneurship)

Chapter 2: Behavioral Aspects of Corporate Entrepreneurship

Chapter 3: Formatting and Managing the Corporate Entrepreneurship Process

Chapter 4: Locating the Venture in the Organization

Chapter 5: Identifying, Evaluating, and Selecting Opportunity

Chapter 6: Developing the Business Plan

Chapter 7: Selecting, Evaluating, and Compensating Venture Management

Chapter 8: Organizing the Venture

Chapter 9: Funding the Venture: The Internal Venture Capital Unit

Chapter 10: Controlling the Venture

Chapter 11: The Internal Politics of Venturing

Chapter 12: Lessons for the Future: Working up Corporate Entrepreneurship in Your Organization