Change can be opportunistic or chaotic: it depends on your perspective. Do the trends and changes swirling around your organization spur entrepreneurial thinking or defensive action? Do you foster an entrepreneurial environment? Are there barriers in your organization preventing you from being entrepreneurial? What drives people to become entrepreneurs? How can Human Resources foster an entrepreneurial culture?

Entrepreneurship is on the radar screen for many foundations, universities, and venture capitalists. The Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation has created funding for Grassroots Rural
Entrepreneurships. Fortune magazine lists the 10 best universities for entrepreneurial learning. Which of the following practices does your organization use to foster entrepreneurship?

1) Hire Masters in the Core Competencies – Many of the greatest entrepreneurs have years of experience and mastery in one or more fields. They have the courage of their convictions and a reputation for excellence. They have followed their interests, passions,and created new visions of what could be. People listen. How many real masters do you
have in your organization?

2) Build critical mass in a region – Make it easier for people to collaborate, challenge and hear one another’s ideas. Create an incubator for creative people to work in areas of great passion and need. There is a hum in the air in Research Triangle Park (biotech and pharmaceuticals), Palo Alto (computer science and biotechnology), New Jersey
(pharmaceutical and medical products), Boston (Learning, Science and Technology), etc. Hubs generate energy and invention.

3) Provide Seed Capital or R&D Funds – Follow the lead of Foundations, Grants,University Research, Start-up Incubators or link your people directly to these ventures. Providing physical space where people can informally brainstorm and create fosters an entrepreneurial atmosphere, as well as positive emotional energy.

4) Provide Recognition and Rewards – There is nothing like success to breed success. Spotlight employees with new patents, breakthroughs in systems or processes, share
history of new product development, and provide team rewards.

5) Use Real Problems for Leadership Development - Our work with Verizon’s Marketing for Future Leaders was exciting because we were able to coach leaders to take on business problems and company challenges. Potential leaders had to immerse themselves in the industry, get sponsorship for their ideas, cross organizational boundaries and present their findings and recommendations to executives. They learned
to see trends, make proposals, sell bottom-line benefits and make an impression on leaders of the company. Their ideas produced profits and saved money.

Questions for Executive Teams

If you and your company leaders are not thinking creatively, following the trends and seeing new options for products and services, your organization can easily be fighting for its life.

Here are some questions to help start a dialogue with leaders and Board Members that could place your people on a more entrepreneurial track and leverage change quickly and powerfully.

1. How do we foster entrepreneurship?
• Programs
• Company Incubators
• Alliances with Universities
• Alliances with Community
• Summits to explore major problems/opportunities

2. How do we recognize innovative and entrepreneurial thinking?
• Presentation Summits
• Open space brainstorming sessions
• Inclusion in strategic planning
• Leadership programs with breakthrough projects
• Spotlight successes monthly on the Web

3. How are managers rewarded for innovation and new business ideas?
• Compensation and bonuses based on innovation
• White papers at conferences
• Presentations to Executive Teams
• R&D Project Funds

4. What are our organizational barriers to entrepreneurial thinking?
• Understaffed
• Limited R&D
• Lack of experience and mastery in core competencies
• New, inexperienced leadership
• No common forum or showcase

5. What are some pressing organization needs or nproblems whose breakthroughs in products,services, and processes are needed?

6. What changes/trends are hitting our industry that will require breakthroughs? Let change be the driver for entrepreneurial thinking in your organization. Attract the best in your core competency areas. Make that one of your Talent Management strategies. Creative people want to be with creative people!