Corporate entrepreneurship refers to entrepreneurial behavior within existing organizations. It includes activities such as internal corporate venturing, intrapreneurship, and bending industry rules. Large companies are increasingly pursuing corporate entrepreneurship to drive innovation and growth, as standalone startups were once able to provide. Examples of successful corporate entrepreneurship initiatives include new product lines developed within Apple and Amazon bending traditional business models.

1. Submitted by: Mayank Singh MBA Entrepreneurship & Leadership

2. Various terms have been used in literature to describe Corporate Entrepreneurship including Intrapreneurship Internal Corporate Entrepreneurship Corporate Ventures Venture Management New Ventures and Internal Corporate Venturing .

3. Intrapreneurship a process whereby an individual or a group of individuals, in association with an existing organization, create a new organization or innovation within that organization.

4. To understand corporate entrepreneurship, we must first look at its parent, “start-up” entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs are generally associated with start-up businesses. Heroes of culture, determination, and risk-taking seem to allow them to do amazing things — Bill Gates, creating Microsoft, Henry Ford, the mass produced automobile, and Jeff Bezos, founding Amazon.com.

5. They identify opportunities, shape and develop these opportunities, and then they create a business structure to turn these opportunities into successful business ventures. The starting point is a new idea. This new idea could be revolutionary or evolutionary and it might not even be theirs, but there is something unique about it.

6. Entrepreneurship: start up or new company ventures, all of which tend to happen outside a conventional organization. Intrapreneurship: entrepreneurial behavior within an organization and a different but overlapping skills set is required.

7. Intrapreneurs act as both manager and entrepreneur

8. Big companies are turning towards corporate entrepreneurship because they are not getting the continual innovation Growth value creation that they once had

9. Corporate Venturing : Involves starting a business within a business, usually sourcing from a core competency or process. A bank, for example, which has a core competency in transaction processing, turns this into a separate business and offers transaction processing to other companies who need mass processing of information.

10. Intrapreneuring: An attempt to take the mindset and behaviors that external entrepreneurs have, and inculcate these characteristics into their employees. Sometimes the company wants every employee to act like an entrepreneur..

11. Organizational Transformation: T ransformation results in the development of new business opportunities. If the transformation involves innovation, a new arrangement or combination of resources, and results in the creation of sustainable economic value. Eg. Dell Computers

12. Industry Rule-Bending: Bending is another type of transformation but focuses on changing the rules of competitive engagement. Eg: Toyota, Amazon.com changed the way books are sold. Callyx and Corolla utilize the Internet and catalog sales to ship flowers directly from the grower to the customer.

13. The development of the Macintosh computer is seen as an intrapreneurial activity within Apple , Apple’s iPod also needs to be seen as intrapreneurial. Amazon.com has forced Barnes and Noble to re-evaluate and change some key aspects of its business model. Homeruns.com has changed the way many people shop for groceries

14. Autobytel has forced GM and others to put up their own websites in direct competition with their own dealers. Nortel Networks, a leader in high growth, high-technology sector, recognizing that it’s extremely difficult to initiate new businesses outside the existing divisions, created the Business Venture Programme

15. Wipro came up with initiative “Innovation@Wipro” which encourages bottom up innovation through a collaborative working model. In HCL Technologies founder Shiv Nadar who provided the early support to Rajendra Pawar and Vijay Thadani to set up NIIT, which became a pioneer in the field of IT education in India.

16. The company was set up in 1987 to offer solutions and services in computer applications It grew from 150 employees in 1996 to over 8300 in March 2001, and from USD 11 million in terms of turnover to USD 240 million for the same period It has operations in 35 countries with a number of Fortune 500 companies as its clients.

17. As part of managing such phenomenal growth, organizationally Shree was restructured into a number of decentralised divisions, called Circles An In-charge-Circle (ICC) heads each Circle; however, all ICCs need not necessarily be at the same level in terms of organisational hierarchy

18. Shree has been able to create a flat organisation. Facilitated creation of new Circles even by fairly junior people where growth opportunities exist. Though it is decentralised, some of the services such as Finance, HR and Corporate Communication are centralized, called Strategic Service Units.

19. A major advantage of such circular, flat structure Flexibility it provides to have organic growth by creating new Circles as spin off from the existing, depending on the product market requirements Encouraging all employees to come out with suggestions for improving existing tools and creating new tools Each Circle operates as a independent “entrepreneurial venture”

20. Though growing rapidly, Google still maintains a small company feel Google's emphasis on innovation and commitment to cost containment means each employee is a hands-on contributor. Environment it has feel like being on the campus of a fortune 500 company, more like a college campus loaded with free thinkers.

21. They are really concerned that their employees can be a self starter If employee runs into a problem, he should be able to focus on that problem without intervention or pausing the entire task hoping someone else will help him It’s like college, employees have to be able to problem solve on their own, not simply stop and hope another team member can fix it for him

22. Ex-Google employees cash in on their company stock to start businesses. There are many enterprises funded by Google and there ex employees running them. The Google way of thinking is better since it does not focus on a specific place, but allows innovation and entrepreneurship to grow within the whole organisation. Google maps, Gmail, Orkut etc. are the result of Intreprenurship at Google

23. Yahoo has initiated a project called Brickhouse. The project is essentially an in-house incubator meant to give it’s entrepreneurial employees another reason to stick with the company.

24. Intel recently launched an innovation program called Systemic Innovation to foster and encourage innovation throughout Intel’s IT organisation.