The key is, you and your managers must wholeheartedly accept
that employees should be allowed to create. Neal Thornberry,
faculty director of the School of Executive
Education at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, has dealt
with companies that entered Babson's corporate entrepreneurship
program but never really seemed to be on board. "We run into
those barriers every time," he says. "Let's [take]
equity [compensation]. We ask senior management, 'Are you
willing to change the way you pay people?' And if they say no,
we say, 'OK, don't do this program anymore, because
you're not serious.'" An additional sign that the
program might not work, says Thornberry, is if the CFO--not the
most willing to invest in anything risky--is overseeing the
program's finances. Thornberry suggests appointing outsiders,
like venture capitalists, to your board to review your innovation
efforts.
What corporate entrepreneurship consultants stress are the
benefits of discovering new talent and the likelihood that if
innovative employees are rewarded properly, they'll stay with
the company rather than resign to start their own businesses.
"Most of the people with the ideas prefer to stay inside
because you have a heck of a brand," says Thornberry.
"[These people] probably already have a pool of talent across
the organization if they can get access to it--and a paycheck every
week. Not everybody's cut out for the start-up entrepreneurship
role."
The thing is, it's hard to tell who has the ability to come
up with fresh ideas, and the dedication to follow through, without
giving everyone a go. When Thornberry taught corporate
entrepreneurship at electrical engineering and electronics company
Siemens eight years ago, he was taken aback when the same
fiftysomething engineer who demanded he be told exactly how to give
a presentation (flip chart or overhead--weighty stuff) went on to
develop a successful business within the company, while two
Stanford MBAs were the first to quit the program for fear it would
throw them off their career paths. Working with food company
Mott's, which found innovators via a competitive application,
Thornberry saw a secretary beat out a senior vice president.
"You never know who could be entrepreneurial unless
they're put in a situation where it might bud," he
says.
"Particularly with the fall of dotcoms, there are a lot of
folks with entrepreneurial tendencies who are now in the
marketplace."
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The first step in building an innovation program, says Leifer,
is understanding that entrepreneurial minds are valuable--even
vital--to your company's success. Then you need to designate a
person (or group) to whom employees can turn with new ideas.
"If you identify people tasked with seeking out new
ideas," says Leifer, "there's a greater chance of
those ideas emerging and being supported and nurtured."
If you sense a lack of entrepreneurial thought within your
company, Leifer suggests looking outside. "Particularly with
the fall of the dotcoms, there are a lot of folks with
entrepreneurial tendencies who are now in the marketplace," he
says.
You'll be surprised by not only how re-energized your
employees are once they're granted entrepreneurial
responsibilites, but also the skills they'll learn. "All
of a sudden the five- or 10-person team [of] programmers or
technical engineers has to do sales and marketing [to get their
ideas funded internally], deal with finances and do human resources
work," says Perry. "They're no longer just individual
contributors, but with new management and business skills, they
become candidates for leadership roles outside their specialty
area."
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