Entrepreneurship in Larger Companies

William R. Kerr

Chapter | The Entrepreneur's Roadmap | 2017

Entrepreneurship in Larger Companies

Abstract

Entrepreneurship in large and established companies is vital for their long-term success. Incumbent firms face many challenges ranging from global competition to digitization. In times past, being caught flat-footed might have set a company back several years, but it could recover. Today, the threats are existential in nature, and competition can emerge quickly and from the places one least expects. Successful incumbents must ensure that they do not become self-complacent but instead look to renew themselves through corporate entrepreneurship (sometimes also called intrapreneurship). Many books and articles document the overall importance of corporate entrepreneurship and associated business renewal, and many advisors consider the important perspective of the CEO looking across the whole company. An example is Leading Breakthrough Innovation in Established Companies (Harvard Business School Press), which provides a longer reference set for the CEO and corporate-wide perspective. This chapter uses a different lens—it focuses instead on the perspective of a middle-to-upper-level manager contemplating a potential assignment to lead an internal venture in a large company. Befitting this series, we build lists of important considerations that this manager should evaluate. These lists are not exhaustive, but they offer corporate leaders a starting point for a careful due diligence and action plan around new ventures.

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship;

Format: Print

Citation:

Kerr, William R. "Entrepreneurship in Larger Companies." Chap. 27 in The Entrepreneur's Roadmap: From Concept to IPO, edited by Tim Dempsey and Bonnie Hyun, 161–164. Chicago, IL: Caxton Business & Legal, Inc., 2017.

Faced with intense competition from Amazon, Walmart began a transformation of its operations and workforce in 2015. The goal was to create an omnichannel retail experience for customers that seamlessly joined online and offline shopping. This case explores Walmart's efforts to deliver this through investments in its workforce makeup and training, digital infrastructure, and automation technology.

A Teaching Note for the "AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow" case study (HBS#820-017). The case describes how AT&T designed and implemented a program to retrain 100,000 of its workers. The case first reviews the technological forces that compelled AT&T to change its competitive strategy in the late 2010s, which in turn threatened to make its workforce’s skillsets obsolete. The case then performs a deep dive on AT&T’s solution, the “Workforce 2020” retraining program. The case concludes by reviewing the early results and potential societal implications of the workforce model.

Faculty & Research

Entrepreneurship in Larger Companies

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author