Companies that are able to create an entrepreneurial culture have a distinct advantage. In this type of business environment, new ideas are birthed at a much faster rate, and corporate growth is maximized.
Entrepreneurship within companies means more than just turning high-potential ideas into value-driving projects. The term implies an organization characterized by creativity, planned risk-taking, and open communication.
However, while most companies strive for a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, few are able to achieve it. Keep reading to learn how to successfully cultivate this type of environment and become one of the world’s most innovative companies.
Empower Your Employees
It’s not enough to hope for change and expect innovation from your employees. To make sure that new ideas are given the space to blossom and evolve, certain foundations must be set in place.
A crucial part of this is to provide individuals within your organization the resources and autonomy to come up with their own projects and execute them. In other words, you need to let your staff act like entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurship involves the analysis of market trends, the identification of strategic opportunities, and calculated decision-making. To infuse these behaviors into your employee’s daily activities, use the following methods:
- Provide extra training and education opportunities
- Reward employees that try to solve problems
- Give staff the independence to make their own decisions
- Award high-performers with more responsibility and decision-making power
- Communicate company objectives and challenges in a transparent manner
Develop Corporate Innovation Programs
Corporate innovation is more important than ever. With the escalating number of startups and market challengers emerging every day, large corporations need to keep evolving. In order to survive, It’s no longer enough to create new iterations of previously successful products.
In fact, since the 2000s, 52% of Fortune 500 companies have either failed, been acquired, or gone bankrupt. This means that even the most powerful market leaders face risks as new technologies are created and the digital transformation continues.
To face these threats, more and more organizations are implementing corporate innovation programs. These are internal initiatives that promote entrepreneurship within a company by fostering problem-solving, leadership, and the creation of innovation infrastructure.
Some examples of corporate innovation programs include:
- Accelerator programs
- Corporate innovation labs
- Intrapreneur programs
- Venture capitalism
- Hackathons
- Mastermind groups
Implement Innovation Platforms
Another effective way to nurture entrepreneurship and innovation at your company is through innovation platforms. These are tools for supporting new ideas and evolving them into actionable improvements for a business.
There are many innovation platforms available, and they can help with a limitless amount of different tasks, activities, and processes.
Some of the different uses of these platforms are as follows:
- Idea generation and development
- Data processing and analysis
- Product and service design
- Crowdsourcing and funding
- Collaborative problem-solving
- Creation of integrated solutions
- Hardware and software development
