• Effective communication of the company’s strategic objectives
• OPS (One Page Strategy)
• At all levels
• Creation of a formal mentors network
• Legitimate
• Supportive of corporate entrepreneurs to
• critically analyse ideas and projects in view of the company’s strategic objectives
• act as informal counselors and sponsors
• Creation of a project assessment committee
• Official, properly incentivated group of managers
• Multidisciplinary to assess
• the business potential of projects
• the strategic alignment of projects
• Projects are followed up and supported by the company according to their potential and alignment assessment
• ‘Spin in’ project: high potential and alignment
• ‘Spin off’ project: high potential and low alignment
• ‘Question mark’ project: high potential and uncertain alignment
• ‘NO GO’ project: poor potential
Figure 5.4 Result of a teamwork session on ‘How can one guarantee the strategic alignment of intrapreneurial projects and initiatives without killing them?’
Finally, concerning my third objective which was to test some pedagogical intuitions, the involvement and satisfaction of all participants, including the teachers, has proved their correctness. The part-time MBA audience was the right target and showed itself eager to learn and contribute. The choice of joint teaching contributed to create a lively and informal climate in which students felt at ease.
We have reached a new stage in the development of our teaching project. We have tested the ‘prototype’ and we know that it is viable: we now have to both deepen and enlarge the scope of our teaching project. Our ambition is to touch several key audiences of our insti- tution, help them understand what corporate entrepreneurship is, where it stands vis-à- vis other organizational processes and practices, and what its practical value is. In order to do so, we plan to rely on our young experience but also integrate relevant conceptual and empirical findings generated both inside and outside EM Lyon. At this point, execu- tive education constitutes our most natural extension domain. Participants have needs and profiles similar to those of our original audience and we are registering a strong inter- est for corporate entrepreneurship among our corporate contacts. At the moment, various course designs are being conceived and tested with corporate clients and we hope, in the medium term, to be able to measure their impact not only on participants’ satisfaction but also on their propensity to become ‘corporate entrepreneurs’.
What matters to us, in any new setting or circumstance, is to be able to maintain a pragmatic and critical perspective on corporate entrepreneurship as well as to create a stimulating learning environment in which all can contribute, develop and enjoy themselves.
Notes
1. The only online syllabi we found at that time were those of the ‘Babson Program on Corporate Entrepreneurship’, a three-day seminar destined for senior managers and ‘Developing Corporate Intrapreneurs’, a 14-week open course at the Stevens Institute of Technology (New Jersey). Though it does not mean there were no other courses on corporate entrepreneurship given at the time, it does indicate a scarce offer.
2. The ‘mainstream’/‘newstream’ dialectic refers to the conflict of interests and the profound differences that oppose the part of the organization that is involved in reproducing, administrating, optimizing and con- trolling (the ‘mainstream’) and the part of the organization that is involved in experimenting and creating (the ‘newstream’). Importance of short-term results, attitude towards risk and acceptance of errors, respect of rules and procedures, reliance on informal networks are all dimensions on which the ‘mainstream’ and the ‘newstream’ are radically opposed. The frictions thus generated, amplified by turf wars, lead to open or masked conflicts which generally end to the detriment of the weaker ‘newstream’.
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