Leg 8. From Itajaí to Newport (VII): Celebrating Corporate Entrepreneurship.
Good Morning to all. I have missed you for a couple of days, but everything is all right here. Let´s start today with the topic: Corporate Entrepreneurship or Intrapreneurship.
Down Mexico Way, Zurich.
I bet the Volvo Ocean Race Organization is full of corporate entrepreneurs at the leadership level. I am not an insider, and I don´t have any information about their corporate strategy either. But we can see it and feel it, beyond the marketing. The Volvo Ocean Race is pushing its own limits every time is running for all of us. I was aware of this race a long time ago because I had a few friends from ABB (by the year 2000) who practiced sailing. And they talked about this race when we were socializing, I think one night when eating at “Down Mexico´s Way Zurich” with my friends (this was a restaurant which doesn´t exist anymore there). 
By the way, today is Cinco de Mayo, one of the most observed celebrations by Mexicans. It is the commemoration of the Mexican victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862. And given the celebration of it, we have to celebrate the corporate entrepreneurial spirit too!. The entrepreneurial spirit is felt everywhere you wish to see it. It is in our blood and brains to be innovators, inventors, creators, and researchers for new answers. The entrepreneurial spirit is also felt by following this regatta. Look how hard to keep an audience to follow seven teams through oceans of all the world, from one host city to another one. And the VOR corporate office is doing it. Moreover, recently digital technologies have helped this VOR awareness a lot, I mean, anyone with Internet can follow it at their fingertips. In addition, you can see how innovation is the core of this organization, by following the evolution of its boats and the investments in new boat technologies, materials, and solutions. I also think many more new innovations will come. One of these days, when I was swimming, I asked myself how Industry 4.0 will challenge the Volvo Ocean Race organization in the future…. what do you think?
But what is corporate entrepreneurship? And as many of the frameworks and concepts I have explained previously, corporate entrepreneurship is a theme that has been developed by many authors, professors, and experts. But for me, corporate entrepreneurship is just the idea of “doing innovation inside a big corporation”. ” Corporate entrepreneurship is a term used to describe entrepreneurial behavior inside established midsized and large organizations” (Kuratko & Morris 2018). It is also called Intrapreneurship.
Another definition of Corporate entrepreneurship is “a team that develops a new business (SME) embedded in the parent organization”. In order to develop something new, these teams need to operate outside the existing norms and constraints of the parent organization which enables them to act and thinks independently from their supervisors in the parent organization (higher level managers) (Kanter, 1985; Lumpkin et al., 2009).
There is another point of view of Intrapreneurship: “Firms fostering innovation strategy provide lower-level managers with the freedom and the authority to try something new when exploring market- and technology-based opportunities” (Miles & Snow, 1978; Stonehouse & Pemberton, 2002).
Personally, my own interpretation of corporate entrepreneurship is nothing else than to create a corporate strategy of innovation. I wouldn´t mind being extensive in this topic, but I will leave the material about innovation for next Leg 9. Now, let´s see where we stand with corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship:
If you wish to see the slides in PDF, click here please: Eliescalante Leg8 Corporate Strategy Corp Entrepreneurship.
Technological disruption is our daily bread. The Industry 4.0 is the most complex and difficult era in which our brains will get involved. The social implications are the most difficult to measure because we are on “speed” venturing mood all the time. The reason why I have repeated (maybe 10 times by now, and I won´t stop to repeat it) that is better to slow down our entry to Industry 4.0 is simply because I envision this change, not as a simple new software or new mechanisms of doing things, or a new box of digital applications which will give us some funny emojis or backgrounds to smile… Industry 4.0 will really change our societies “completely”.
How to mockup Industry 4.0?
Particularly the future of work and the way we will decide to interact with machines. The impact of a mediocre design, formulation, execution, and deployment of Industry 4.0 may barren a whole generation Z or maybe more generations, and it is better to go with caution, testing the society models “petit a petit”. Remember, we are not talking about business models anymore, but villages, cities, society or even country models with Industry 4.0. Every time I think that we have inherited 3 billion people who live in extreme poverty, I think, our ancestors and many of us have rushed too much to become what we are with our businesses today. There is something our ancestors did not do well, which has not given us a better-balanced society model. We did not do what the Volvo Ocean Race experts have done: mockups, several prototypes in our search for a fair society design. As an ethical capitalist, we have to fix and repair our bad inheritances first. Remember FIX and REPAIR first.
Returning back to our sailing race, we are just around 1,000 nautic miles from Newport, and still, we have one more topic to develop and the summary-conclusions. At the moment, Team Brunel is winning just for 3.1 miles to Dongfeng, and Vestas 11th is behind a bit. We will pass through the Bermuda Triangle in the next hours, and we hope all these histories about paranormal episodes or extraterrestrial activities won´t affect any of our digital-satellite systems on board.
This is all for today, let´s see you tomorrow with the theme: “Corporate Leadership when Change Happens”.
Thank you.
Inspiration Source References:
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/the-four-models-of-corporate-entrepreneurship/
https://www.strategy-business.com/article/8276?gko=8c782
Disclaimer: All the presentation slides shown on this blog are prepared by Eleonora Escalante MBA-MEng. Nevertheless, all the pictures or videos shown on this blog are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.
Eleonora Escalante Strategy 