Most organizations find that their ability to identify and innovatively exploit opportunities
decreases as they move from the entrepreneurial to the growth phase. However, the key to
success in the highly competitive and dynamic environment that most companies presently
operate in is to retain this ability. Therefore, companies need to adopt an entrepreneurial
strategy — seeking competitive advantage through continuous innovation to effectively exploit
identified opportunities — in order to sustain and grow under such circumstances.
For such a strategy to succeed, companies should develop an enabling economic and
political ecosystem that does not impede small or large scale redeployment of resources in new
ways towards creative, entrepreneurial ends. Companies have a range of options to choose from
to achieve this objective. At the one end of this option spectrum is ‘focused entrepreneurship’
wherein specific innovation initiatives are created with the rest of the organization insulated
from them. At the other end is a managerial approach that leads to the creation of ‘organizationwide
entrepreneurship.’ Entrepreneurship in such organizations is a shared value and drives
managerial behaviour in conscious and subconscious ways and creates an entrepreneurial
spirit organization-wide.
Many mature organizations, unwilling to alter the status quo, tend to create focused
initiatives that are mandated to identify and exploit new opportunities. While such focused
initiatives may stimulate innovation, the very nature of their design erects barriers between the
existing organization and the innovation effort. This makes it difficult for the organizations to
access and leverage the existing capability base and to integrate new initiatives back into
operational activity.