How to Develop Your Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Maintain It Long After Your Startup Is Successful
Risk-taking, those large bets made early on as startups to differentiate themselves from the competition, is the foundation of all prosperous organizations. After they are established, businesses usually strive to capitalize on their newfound size while maintaining this spirit of entrepreneurship.
The issue is that risk aversion frequently accompanies progress. Even though many big businesses claim to value entrepreneurship, most of them find it difficult to implement. Workers frequently lack the time or resources to engage in the free-form creative thinking that first made the company successful since they are expected to perform their current responsibilities.
In order to stay afloat in the rapidly changing market of today, well-established businesses need to aggressively encourage entrepreneurship among their ranks. As the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College, I’ve spent 23 years and taught more than 10,000 people how to be more entrepreneurial.
In order to sustain growth in the rapidly changing modern marketplace, well-established businesses need to aggressively encourage entrepreneurship among their staff members by bringing out and utilizing their innate creativity. These three tactics can assist your staff in realizing their entrepreneurial potential so that your business can stay ahead of the curve and keep innovating.
- Provide your employees with the time and tools they need to be innovative
The ability to spot or create opportunities and the guts to seize them are the two pillars of entrepreneurship. Certain organizations limit entrepreneurship to individuals creating novel items. However, really innovative businesses understand that talent across the whole workforce, not just one department, have the entrepreneurial abilities and behavior.
Every employee, from marketing to human resources, can support an entrepreneurial culture by improving internal processes, developing new products, and starting new businesses. Your staff need time and resources to experiment with new ideas, though, if your business is to gain from them.
Consider setting aside money for testing. Allow staff to arrange time for introspection and creativity. For a team of ten, eliminating one hour of a needless meeting might result in ten hours of dedicated time for individual employee exploration. If staff members aren’t yet able to present a compelling business case, don’t discard suggestions. Innovative and novel items are not supported by market statistics. Allow time and space for people to conduct experiments and gather data.
Scheduling “innovation days” is also turning into a standard tactic. Every quarter, employees at the software company Atlassian are given a 24-hour window to dedicate themselves to something completely different from their regular tasks. The ensuing advancements include things like speeding up software and replacing the office’s old energy-efficient lighting.
Innovation days provide a fantastic beginning. However, for maximum success, entrepreneurship needs to be a daily habit that your staff members adopt. It will take time to foster an entrepreneurial mindset throughout the entire organization. Begin modestly in a few departments and allow the culture and practice to develop from there.
- Allow room for failure
Many businesses assert that failure is valuable and that it is an integral part of being an entrepreneur. In the end, though, people are more inclined to recognize achievement in the business’s current operations than for having the guts to try a novel idea and fail. Workers at these organizations lack what Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson called “psychological safety“—the knowledge that it’s okay to take the risks necessary for learning, such as discussing failures and asking for feedback.
Encouraging employees to realize that a low-stakes exploration gone wrong is not a huge concern is a part of fostering psychological safety.
Remind team members that the ability to overcome minor setbacks is one advantage of being a well-established business. Indeed, you should expect them if staff members are performing their duties correctly. After all, taking no chances has a price of its own: stagnation.
Workers are also reluctant to take chances if they think that playing it safe will increase their chances of getting promoted or if they fear that failing will result in unfavorable comments. Employees at genuinely entrepreneurial businesses have faith that taking risks—as long as they stay within reasonable parameters—will be encouraged and even rewarded. For instance, the Indian conglomerate Tata Group honors bold attempts at failed ideas with a “Dare to Try” award. Moreover, you can promote risk-taking by praising entrepreneurial thinking in performance evaluations, regardless of the result.
- Innovation intentionally
Being an entrepreneur doesn’t entail stumbling across the next big idea by chance. It should direct an organization’s current resources toward fresh initiatives that support its overarching objectives.
Assume you run a solar energy business with the goal of encouraging renewable energy. Asking how your present technology and expertise may serve environmental aims outside of your current products is an example of intentional innovation. Even though you’re using various approaches, you’re still working toward the same goal and relying on the foundations of your knowledge.
Encourage staff members to consider potential innovations and areas in which their unique skills could be most useful.
Maybe there’s a chance to transfer past knowledge to a new field with an unanticipated connection, or apply current skills to an old issue. For example, Suzuki, a car and motorbike manufacturer, used its experience in manufacturing weaving looms to develop engine-powered bicycles and later, bigger cars.
Ensure that staff members are aware of the time, money, and other resources available for experimentation, and that projects that have genuine potential and expand will be supported.
You’re not beginning from scratch as in a startup. Major benefits exist for established organizations when it comes to being entrepreneurial. A large and skilled workforce, strong financial standing, ties to the community, and devoted customers are all important assets that can foster new forms of growth and innovation. However, in order to fully realize this potential, you’ll need to provide your employees with the time and tools they need to be innovative, allow them to make mistakes, and inspire them to dream large within the constraints at hand.
