The journey of an enterprise from birth to death...

In a way, an enterprise is quite similar to any living entity on earth. Arie De Geus has actually identified and promoted this view in "The Living Company".

Having witnessed all of it in a short span of 20 years of my professional career; I will trace the journey from inception to extinction from my own viewpoint. It is an attempt to guide the budding entrepreneurs at all stages of evolution of an enterprise.

Keep watching this space for the following posts on this subject...

From entrepreneurship to intrapreneurship...

Mostly entrepreneurship and employment are considered mutually exclusive. In this post, we will argue a case for their coexistence. Towards the end we will also look at at least one company which has successfully achieved it. Let's start with looking at the core set of problems faced by individuals (aspiring entrepreneurs) and organizations.

People turn entrepreneurs for a number of reasons. The prime drivers could be a strong desire for independence, predetermined goals (decided early in life), opportunity OR just the financial incentive. However the path turns out to be quite a challenge. Few survive beyond the first couple of years and the breakeven rate is of the order of 2%. The failures can be attributed to thousands of reasons and the number will probably approach the number of failures, but we can categorize them into two primary categories:

• Failure due to poor business concept : The basic idea was poorly conceptualized, the startup was run over by stronger competition, or simply the customers were not ready to accept the product.
• Failure due to execution issues : I have seen many great ideas fail because of trivial reasons. Lack of capital and infrastructure, poor access to the target market, lack of management skills.
  

Some of the initiatives manage to go past these stages and turn into large enterprises. As they near near the maturity level of their industry, product or service; the strategy starts to fail. Their values, processes and people fail to reinvent themselves, leading to decline in business.

A quick look at this situation, gives us a perspective. Mature organizations possess all the resources and abilities, due to which individuals fail. If they are willing to promote the entrepreneur within the organization and give them the space to realize their dreams, it would be a win win situation for all. A simple and quick maths reveals that a bit of wealth sharing can lead to exponential growth and longer life for the organizations...

The company which has implemented an almost perfect strategy in this respect is 3M. Innovation being centric to the organizational philosophy, 3M has promoted organization level innovation (spin-offs / divisions created by employees); whenever it made a strong business case. In my view, it is "Built to survive...".