Corporate Entrepreneurship: Innovation with Experience

Citing a myriad of reasons why, many people and companies would choose experience and resources over freedom of choice. Others, like entrepreneurs prefer freedom of choice over experience and infrastructure. 

Freedom of choice enables capitalizing on passion without limits. In other words, the pursuit of “possible” triumphs over the safety of "known"; a choice driven by passion and independent of circumstance.

What if we make decisions driven by the guidance of passion along with the experience of established wisdom?

Entrepreneurs, by the very nature of this work environment, are not afraid to be wrong or different. With their emboldened adventurism, they create "new and fresh". The potentials of new include: high margins, high growth and high impact. And on the flip side, they often lack the experience and resources to realize those potentials.

The establishment comes to the table with proven results: growth, experience, and resources to leverage. However, independent of industry, established companies face an inevitable half-life of their initial growth spurt forcing a change or evolution of their offer.  How does a company who understands the pulse of yesterday keep up with tomorrow when what they knew may no longer be what they need to know?

Interestingly, the converging benefits and needs of entrepreneurs and the establishment, while complimentary, actually do not represent the majority of entrepreneurial opportunity. Why?

Our current business climate demands a constant push for more even during times where commoditization has never been higher – thanks to the internet, the cloud and outsourcing. Commoditization is not the enemy here. It stimulates a need for progression. Companies face this challenge every day. Time and time again, we see the revenue of industry giants such as Sears and New York Times plummet -- a direct result of not adapting to change. 

The commonality? Both companies respectively failed to realize their true value proposition around convenience. As connectivity evolves, the value proposition of convenience continues to expect more. We expect companies to accurately anticipate customer problems and provide simple solutions now. 

How does a company stay connected to the current trends supporting that demand? How often do those manifestations arise from entrepreneurs rather than companies? Those entrepreneurs exist at ground zero. They create from ground zero the same as the early stages of a company. Combining the visibility of the present with the vantage point of the future enables companies to balance both.

Sooner or later, established companies will need to embrace the ingenuity of entrepreneurs or be consumed by it. I say if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.