As the recession fades, corporate leaders need to switch from crisis mode to thinking more seriously about how to grow revenues and create value once again. Corporate entrepreneurship -the creation of new businesses inside established corporations - offers a strategy for profitable growth and serves as an attractive alternative to old, acquisition-led, inorganic growth strategies.
In the latest IESE Insight magazine, Hakan Ener, assistant professor of Entrepreneurship at IESE, poses six key questions that senior executives, heads of business units and corporate divisions should start asking themselves, so that the start-up spirit finds free expression in the corporate world.
The article is based on the author’s own work collaborating with companies to help them create new business units, as well as relating the real-life experiences of corporate entrepreneurs. Ener suggests smarter ways for customer-facing managers and employees to generate ideas, assess their potential, measure their progress and boost the buy-in of senior management.
He also explains how executives from major European corporations are traveling the world in search of new business opportunities, with some establishing outposts in Silicon Valley to learn more about innovation and entrepreneurship close to the source.
Ener shares more state-of-the-art practices on corporate entrepreneurship and on how Silicon Valley entrepreneurs operate, in his blog posts as part of the IESE Entrepreneurship Department blog.
Members of the Alumni Association and subscribers to IESE Insight- a quarterly research-based magazine, published in separate English and Spanish editions - can read this and other articles using their membership credentials.
Those who are neither Alumni nor subscribers can access the premium content either by subscribing to the magazine or buying the article here.
Preview the article "Six Keys to Release Ideas for Profitable Growth"