Corporate Entrepreneurship -

The Creation of New Businesses within a Firm

Corporate Entrepreneurship, which refers to the efforts of corporations to generate new
business, has, until recently, received far less attention. Indeed, to those who view large firms
as bureaucratic and inhospitable to creativity and innovation, the term corporate
entrepreneurship is an oxymoron.


The 1950s and 1960s image of the corporate executive in the conservative gray flannel suit,
was replaced in the 1980s and 1990s as an overly compensated short-term thinker, unwilling to
innovate and take risks. And at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the word corporate
followed by the word entrepreneurship conjured up dark images of greedy corporate
executives who would find creative and innovative ways, whether legal or not, to line their
pockets with millions of rupees at the expense of shareholders, employees and the public at
large. However, with the passage of time, things have changed drastically.


We can now see trends of a growing interest in the use of corporate entrepreneurship by
corporations to enhance the innovative abilities of their employees and, at the same time,
increase corporate success through the creation of new corporate ventures. In certain
conditions, corporate managers have to take more risk and have to venture into
entrepreneurial activities. Certain studies show that many corporations struggle to manage the
inherent contradictions of corporate entrepreneurship, due to tensions between the notions of
individual initiative on the one hand and conventional corporate management on the other.
While corporate entrepreneurship offers a number of merits and is at times a strategic
necessity, it also throws up a number of issues, the most important being the risk of strategic
misalignment and the risk of competitive advantage erosion. Success of these ventures,
therefore, depends on the organizations ability to nurture an environment conducive to a
peaceful co-existence of entrepreneurship and traditional management.





Surinder Pal Singh
Professional Speaker I Executive Coach I Corporate Trainer
+91-9873901021 I spsmail2000@gmail.com