Wk2: The Entrepreneurial Organisation

Question 1

Characteristics of successful entrepreneurs?

Answer 1

• Opportunists, using creativity, drive & vision, create social/economic value
• Challenge conventional wisdom by practicing disruptive innovation
• change game rules by questioning status quo & upping stakes
• ask why are things done this way? How can we do things better

Question 2

What is the natural cycle of a business?

Answer 2

1. Innovation/Opportunism
2. Growth
3. Protection
4. Atrophy
5. Crisis
6. Extinction or transformation

Question 3

4 connected factors of entrepreneurial organisation

Answer 3

1. Leadership
2. Organisational culture & structure
3. the Team (Composition & dynamics)
4. Employee profile

Question 4

Leadership in an Entrepreneurial organisation?

Answer 4

• People are led rather than managed
• Vision & strategy set by senior leadership team
• Leaders exist throughout the organisation even if not in formal leadership roles

Question 5

3 characteristics of leadership?

Answer 5

• Vision
• Empowerment
• Tolerance of risk

Question 6

Wrt Leadership

What is Vision?

Answer 6

• Meaningful, clearly articulated mission and long-term plan
• Motivates employees towards desired behaviour & common purpose
• Must be concrete ito values
• Reinforce entrepreneurial behaviour

Question 7

Wrt Leadership

What is Empowerment?

Answer 7

• Know when to empower your employees
• Authoritarian stifles creativity, but liassez-faire results in ideas not being realised
• At project inception, more empowerment/autonomy is necessary
• As ideas become more concrete, less empowerment & more directive approach is necessary
• Reduce office politics & centralisation of power

Question 8

Wrt Leadership

Tolerance of risk?

Answer 8

• Leaders must establish a comfortable level of risk tolerance
• actively seek opportunities to take controlled risks
• mitigate risks when new initiatives pursued
• manage risk by delegating responsibility to subordinates
• empower employees to act quickly & decisively

Question 9

Wrt the Organisation

Explain Culture.

Answer 9

• Organisational Values & beliefs influencing employee behaviour and experiences
• Entrepreneurial culture= open inclusive culture where communication of ideas is actively facilitated
• Time made for developing ideas and space for failure
• Support intrapreneurs

Question 10

Wrt the organisation

Explain Structure

Answer 10

• Describes how jobs are groups and divided
• Structure to maximise opportunity exploitation is necessary
• 3 factors: Work specialisation
• Departmentalisation
• Chain of command & Span of control

Question 11

Explain Teams-Composition & Dynamics

Answer 11

Small groups of people working together to solve problems
Underperforming teams share apathy & inertia
Functional conflict must be encouraged

Question 12

Wrt Entrepreneurial teams

How to encourage functional conflict?

Answer 12

Manage these 4 factors:
* Groupthink (scared to go against the group; Heuristics)
* Resources (more information available; learn new skills; communicate with other departments)
* Communication (share idea with more experts to increase its practicality)
* Team spirit (team must believe they can and will succeed)

Question 13

The Employee profile

What are the 4 entrepreneurial characteristics?

Answer 13

Organisation puts together employees with right combo of entrepreneurial characteristics
* Creativity (ability to generate new ideas)
* Opportunism (ability to see new business opportunities)
* Proactivity (ability to do things proactively and get things done)
* Vision (ability to see the bigger picture)