Page 164 - ENTREPRENEURSHIP Innovation and entrepreneurship

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The Entrepreneurial Business 157

this opportunity focus into its monthly management meetings. “The
opportunities we spot in there,” the chief executive officer has said
many times, “are not nearly as important as the entrepreneurial atti-
tude which the habit of looking for opportunities creates throughout
the entire management group.”
2. This company follows a second practice to generate an entre-
preneurial spirit throughout its entire management group. Every six
months it holds a two-day management meeting for all executives in
charge of divisions, markets, and major product lines—a group of
about forty or fifty people. The first morning is set aside for reports
to the entire group from three or four executives whose units have
done exceptionally well as entrepreneurs and innovators during the
past year. They are expected to report on what explains their success:
“What did we do that turned out to be successful?” “How did we find
the opportunity?” “What have we learned, and what entrepreneurial
and innovative plans do we have in hand now?”
Again, what actually is reported in these sessions is less important
than the impact on attitudes and values. But the operating managers
in the company also stress how much they learn in each of these ses-
sions, how many new ideas they get, and how they return back home
from these sessions full of plans and eager to try them.
Entrepreneurial companies always look for the people and units
that do better and do differently. They single them out, feature them,
and constantly ask them: “What are you doing that explains your suc-
cess?” “What are you doing that the rest of us aren’t doing, and what
are you not doing that the rest of us are?”
3. A third practice, and one that is particularly important in the
large company, is a session—informal but scheduled and well pre-
pared—in which a member of the top management group sits down
with the junior people from research, engineering, manufacturing,
marketing, accounting and so on. The senior opens the session by
saying: “I’m not here to make a speech or to tell you anything, I’m
here to listen. I want to hear from you what your aspirations are, but
above all, where you see opportunities for this company and where
you see threats. And what are your ideas for us to try to do new
things, develop new products, design new ways of reaching the mar-
ket? What questions do you have about the company, its policies, its
direction … its position in the industry, in technology, in the market-
place?”
These sessions should not be held too often; they are a substantial