Entrepreneurial Thinking - Corporate Entrepreneurship Assignment

201920ENTR625-111

Entrepreneurial Thinking

Corporate Entrepreneurship Assignment

March 11, 2019

Matthew Mok

Innovation. It is the hot button topic that many businesses are constantly pushing today. From the big dogs of Silicon Valley to the scions of the up and coming tech companies of Shenzhen. Innovation is paramount in the successes of companies like Google, Tesla, Huawei, etc. Most people would agree that innovation is great, and we need more of it as a synergy between the traditional work platform and “thinking outside the box”. While innovation is undoubtedly a remarkable aspect that every company should aspire to at some point to reach further growth and development. There are many challenges and barriers that can put the idea of corporate entrepreneurship on halt. In the following pages, 1) I will identify challenges and potential barriers that hinders innovation in the workplace. 2) I will utilize my prior work experience as a frame of reference for evaluating my past supervisor in the ability in promoting corporate entrepreneurship. 3) I will provide actionable recommendations about what my supervisors can do to improve their entrepreneurial processes.

Here comes the million-dollar question - “What contributes to the success of some firms in developing effective corporate entrepreneurship?” There are many factors at play here according to the article, companies can further explore the role of their employees and help empower them by creating a culture that align with entrepreneurship within the workplace. However, the key objective here is to achieve a definite balance of the two acts on the entrepreneurial equilibrium. Take autonomy for example, it is important for employers to give employees freedom to explore and capitalize on their own ideas to further creativity. But this element can also be a double-edged sword if a company failed to strike a balance between giving creative freedom and the cost of trial and error for the company.

At my previous job working as a pharmacy technician at CVS. I was responsible for asking customers if they would like to get a seasonal flu-shot at our store. It would be billed through their healthcare insurance, usually free of charge and to be administered by a licensed professional. In retrospect, I was encouraged by my supervisor to come up with my own creative script for asking our customers. In the nascent, I didn’t have a particularly hard time asking for the flu-shots, and I was quite successful in contributing to our daily quota. However, when people from corporate came to visit our store, they were not particularly pleased with the number of flu-shots at our branch. Our store was below expectation in terms of meeting the quota for flu-shots per month. Thus, we needed to be more proactive and deliberate in promoting the product. Lauren, the regional manager, suggested that we use the script created by her team as a more efficient method of communication when asking the customers for flu-shots. The new scripts were very rigid and aggressive to the point that it was very uncomfortable for me to ask my customers. Nevertheless, I had no choice but to integrate the scripts to my daily routine. Long story short, our store performance increased. We sold more flu-shots and reached the top 3 in district performance.

Was our objective of getting more flu-shots successful? You bet. But at what cost? CVS is often seen as an innovative company with original solutions such as the MinuteClinic and home delivery services. Back when I first started my job, I was given multiple exercises by my supervisor as an encouragement to “think outside the box” and to take ownership in the workplace. The idea of the innovation and creativity is important, and many corporations are catching up to the idea. It is good that CVS is heading in that direction. But how can you effectively bring that to the workplace? How can innovation be measured in terms of performance? What can you breakthrough the challenges and barriers? These are all important concerns that companies need to address.

Employees are undoubtedly one of the most underrated assets of a company. Most companies failed to see the long-term economic value of fostering employees’ creativity, which may have a lasting positive impact as the firm evolve. Unfortunately, most corporations are fixed on the foresight of what’s at hand in the moment - Money. The focus of CVS was on the incremental innovation to maximize the bottom-line and effectively beat out competitions. While their unwillingness to further accept trial and error from employees like me may potential destroy their capability for breakthrough innovation. It is only fair that we further examine the issue from CVS’s point of view.

One thing that CVS did well was that they are “trying” to promote creativity. Kelly, my store supervisor was always willing to explore the different styles suitable for me to work more efficiently. He gave me “space” to do my work, free from constant interruption, oversight, and allowed to take initiatives in defining my role within the workplace. Moreover, Kelly was always trying to build me up by saying “I am counting on you!”, or “You got this!” when assigning me challenging tasks. Albeit I was given enough slack to finish doing my tasks to the best of my abilities with minimal intervention. This aspect not only gave me empowerment and motivation to succeed. But it also helped built a support system within the store to promote sharing and collaborating with others. Kelly was great at instilling a set of vital attributes in the workplace critical for creative entrepreneurship.