Different Dimensions of Entrepreneurship in the Modern Era

Entrepreneurship is the process of identifying, developing, and bringing a new idea or solution to life—typically through the creation of a business venture—with the goal of generating value, whether economic, social, or both. In simple terms, entrepreneurship is about turning ideas into action and making them work in the real world.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Intrapreneurship
3. Technopreneurship
4. Netpreneurship (E-Entrepreneurship/Cyberpreneurship)
5. International Entrepreneurship

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1. Introduction

“Virgin could never have grown into the group of more than 200 companies it is now, were it not for a steady stream of intrapreneurs who looked for and developed opportunities, often leading efforts that went against the grain.”

Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Atlantic Airlines

2. Intrapreneurship

It is the practice of entrepreneurship by an employee in an established organization to convert a lucrative idea in to a business opportunity. Intrapreneurs can be either the employees or even leaders in an organization riding high on self motivation, creativity, and innovation while assuming risk without being asked to do so. The term Intrapreneur was first defined by Gifford Pinchot in 1984. He defines intrapreneurs as “dreamers who do. Those who take hands on responsibility for creating innovation of any kind without being asked to do so”.

2.1 Definition of Intrapreneurship

According to American Heritage Dictionary an intrapreneur means,

“A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation”.

Intrapreneurship is also known as Corporate Entrepreneurship, where formal structures for promoting intrapreneurship lead to greater possibility of profitability and growth. Many a times, nearly 80% of any organization’s employees feel discontented and demotivated to pursue the structured activity with a predefined systems and processes. They strongly experience the need to innovate either the mechanism, or product or processes to either redo or undo or outdo the earlier ways of doing the business. If not properly stimulated and encouraged, such employees may leave the organization and start new entity of their own. But when properly nurtured, these employees provide cutting edge to the organizations by coming out with more cost effective ways of doing the erstwhile tasks or innovating altogether a novelty. Such Intrapreneurs while drawing from organisation’s resources, become exceptional at leading the teams and make quick decisions to seize the opportunity.

Quiet often the presence of Intrapreneurs are rewarding for employees as well as for the organization as they chalk out the strategy to convert unconventional, out of the box ideas into viable and lucrative business models. For example, at a reputed company Lockheed Martin, a passionate employee, Kelly Johnson, came up with the idea of creating Advancement Development Program (ADP), popularly named as “Skunk Works”, to build P-80 fighter jets. Skunk Works, formed in 1943, developed one of the most innovative aircrafts models, is still in operations today. The employee team could come up with such valuable Innovation, only when they were allowed to operate with great flexibility while drawing resources from the organisation.

When organizations develop an ecosystem to nurture intrapreneurship then it is also referred as Corporate Entrepreneurship. Now Corporate Entrepreneurship has become a full fledged management discipline and widely practiced by umpteen companies across the globe. Noted global companies like Google, Intel, 3M and Siemens are some of the companies that promote intrapreneurship within their organizations, allowing their employees to spend a certain percentage of their time on innovative ideas that are not related to their normal jobs. For example, animation world was swept by its feet when employee of Microsoft, Robbie Bach J Aallrd and his team invented Xbox, a Gaming Console. It would not have been possible without millions of money funded by Microsoft for encouraging the same. Even consultancy companies like Accenture, Barclays and Deloitte have devised formal programmes to motivate their employees to innovate. Closer home Indian companies like Infosys, TCS and Kinetic India have also created new products and utilities through the various inhouse innovations developed by their creative employees.

As intrapreneurs are required to act pro-actively, often they go beyond the organizational bureaucracy and defined processes to visualize and formalize the opportunity. If the innovative and radical strategies are stifled in an organization, then the business has to look outside for entrepreneurship. In the 21st century organisation should nurture conducive environment, flexibility and healthy policy frameworks to bolster creativity, self assumed responsibility and risk taking amongst employees.

2.2 Importance of Intrapreneurship

By inculcating intrapreneurship in an organisation, while companies gain and develop a competitive edge for themselves in the industry, employees also find necessary infrastructure processes and funds for crystallizing their ideas in to reality. The Importance of Intrapreneurship in an organization can be described as below –

1. Identification of opportunity –The first task of an intrapreneur is to identify the lucrative idea. He needs to test whether idea is user friendly, market adaptable and in consonance with the specified goals and strategies of the organization.
2. Idea presentation – The intrapreneur clearly presents the idea to other members of organization and takes their feedback and suggestions for improvement.
3. Ideas implementation – To implement the discussed proposals, the intrapreneur forms a team which puts the idea in action and converts the idea into an enterprise.
4. Strategy and Planning – Effective intrapreneurial strategies always help the entrepreneur/organization to win over their competitors and grab every lucrative opportunity.
5. Expansion of the enterprise – The ultimate goal of Intrapreneurship is to create that kind of entrepreneurial mindset and infrastructure which are needed to support growth in an organization.
6. Fostering Innovation in the organization – Intrapreneurship fosters organizational growth while strengthening employee morale and productivity. Intrapreneurship primarily thrives on the innovation and creativity of employees. Intrapreneurship and innovation are so closely intertwined that often it is difficult to imagine intrapreneurship without innovation.
7. Leadership – Last but the utmost task of an intrapreneur is to be the leader and drive other employees within his team and then the organization towards sustainability and realization of innate talent of staff.

2.3 Drivers of Intrapreneurship

During the recent years, there has been growing interest in intrapreneurship owing to following factors –

1. Urgency to harness an internal environment to support and sustain innovation in an organisation.
2. Need to engage and nurture the best and brightest talent in the organization
3. Introduction and penetration of change successfully and effectively in the business.
4. Ever increasing pressure to improve overall productivity and profitability.
5. Need to generate new businesses facilitating growth.

2.4 Identifying and Cultivating Corporate Entrepreneurs

As intrapreneurs are crucial for success as well as for transformation of organizations, organizations must carefully identify its individual intrapreneurs among its employees. Those exhibiting entrepreneurial traits like vision, passion, willingness to take risks and demonstrated leadership skills should be properly trained as well as encouraged to experiment and innovate to add value to the business. A company should develop a complete model of corporate entrepreneurship by clearly defining how the flow of creative ideas will be addressed and resultant innovations will be supported by the company.

What organization should do to promote intrapreneurial environment?

• Top management should be receptive and welcome innovative ideas with open arms.
• Adequate and timely allocation of resources to strengthen innovation.
• 360 degree of communication to facilitate two way communications between employees and senior management level to voice and illustrate ideas and suggestions.
• Orientation towards creating value rather than wealth.
• Timely recognition and reward system for nurturing intrapreneurship.

2.5 Rising Intrapreneurs Around the World

Beyond the success of famous entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or Dhirubhai Ambani, Today world is also a testimony to internally nurtured and driven intrapreneurs around the world. Post Covid-19 Pandemic, technology and innovations are seen as the true harbinger of growth by nor only companies but by countries as well. Following is the story of Richard Montanez the developer of Flamin Hot Cheetos by U.S.A. Frito Lays company.

Richard Montanez was born and brought in very modest family and was dropped out from school. His first reasonable job came from a local Frito-Lay factory as a Janitor at the age of 18. Richard while doing his mundane job also paid close attention towards learning factory processes and operations. One day when he heard the CEO of Frito Lays urging employee to “Act like an Owner”, Richard’s idea of developing a snack catering to traditional tastes of Latino communities, saw the light of the day. He called up the CEO of Frito Lay from the factory phone to share his idea. Enrico, the CEO liked his idea and approved his project to come up with now what is knows as “Flamin Hot Cheetos” a multi billion U.S.D. product, being a very successful and popular snack time of Frito Lay. Later on, Richard donned the hat of V.P. cultural Pepsi Co.

Some of the other noteworthy intrapreneurs in the past are. Jen Kuntang developing “Play Station” a gaming console for Sony, Paul Buchheit developing Gmail- an email service for Google. Mina Bastawros developing “Crowdcraft” a open crowd sourcing and crowd staffing platform, seeking solution to technical problem of aircraft from external as well as internal contributors.

2.6 Difference Between Entrepreneur and Intrapreneur

3. Technopreneurship

It is the application of entrepreneurship in a technology intensive context to develop new products, processes and or services for self, organization or society. When an entrepreneur combines his talent with a high cutting edge technology to come out with novelty, he is said to be technopreneur.

A technopreneur is an entrepreneur who is technology driven, innovative and risk taker to assume unexplored path. A technopreneur enjoys both technology and business skills to capture high growth opportunity. He uses technology to arrive with new products utilities or services through a process of commercialization. Technopreneur constantly remain engaged in either finding new or refined way of completing a task or solving a problem while armed with technology based solutions.

Some of the iconic technopreneurs like Bill Gates (Microsoft), late. Steve Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google), have innovated some of the most marvelous innovations for human kind. By combining their technical and intellectual knowledge with commerce, these technopreneurs have created highly appreciable products, utilities and services for society and wealth and repute for themselves. These inventions by visionary entrepreneurs have led large scores of people to experiment, adopt and finally engage in new forms of businesses, offering myriad services in diverse business fields like B2B, B2C, B2G, G2C and even now the most concurrent, M2M ( Machines to Machines).

Machines to Machines is a subpart of drive called as Internet of things, initiated by our Honorable Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. Internet of things is the drive to electronically connect machines to machines over large geographical spaces to enable speeder and effective communication between people and devices across different networks.

Now various websites like Alibaba.com, Myntra.com, Naukri.com, Du.ac.in, Mygov.in, LinkedIn, Health.com and so on facilitate people to manage businesses, do shopping, search jobs, gain education, comply with Government norms, socialize with society and also take care of their health while being online.

As nothing comes free of cost, too much invasion and dependence on technology has once again enslaved humankind, but this time to technology. The increasing addiction to technology has swept away people from reality meanwhile also highlighting the need to reorient entrepreneurs towards more socially and environmentally sustainable business models.

4. Netpreneurship (E-Entrepreneurship/Cyberpreneurship)

The virtual world of internet has opened sea of opportunities for scores of individuals, organizations, society and nations. Through a personal computer, now even through a mobile phone one can buy/sell/ use or reuse a product or service available online. Now businesses in particular startups have also noted the influence and the outreach of internet and have moved from brick and mortar to online business to witness as well as gain the rewards of technology.

4.1 Meaning of Netpreneurship

Netrpreneurship is the process of identifying and pooling bunch of resources to convert a promising opportunity in to a viable business venture online. It is the internet based entrepreneurship that works through online domain only.

When a person matches his ‘intellectual capital’ with’ ‘connectivity’ (Balachandran and Sakthivelan, 2013) to offer goods and services online, he is referred as a Netpreneur or e-preneur. These kinds of netpreneurs are also known as Self Employed Netpreneurs (SENs), employing other employees for carrying online services. A Netpreneur can be a self employed individual or one who predominantly employs several virtual employees

4.2 Definition of Netpreneurship

The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English defines ‘’net-preneur’’, ”as someone who has started an Internet business”. A Netpreneur is a person who creates, delivers products and services through online mode.

Netrpreneurship enables the businesses and in particular startups to identify engage and retain consumer through social or company based portals for exchange of goods, services and ideas. The escalating costs, complexity and the saturated markets in brick and mortar mode has led many entrepreneurs find an alternative business model in the form of netrpreneurship.

Netpreneurship is comparatively an affordable business proposition to begin with. Some of the world’s most influential companies began their humble steps through netpreneurship only. For e.g. the world’s leading company Google was started by its founders in late 1990 as a start-up only that too in a garage. Other similar companies include e-bay.com, amazon.com, paytm. com, Flipkart.com, monster.com and so on.

Now days, with the advent of internet-based technologies like email, Web, VoIP (voice over internet protocol), and remote access software to communicate with global employers, has made working from home much easier and enjoyable for large number of self employed people. A home office is a good choice for professionals who operate their own service-based small business (i.e., real estate, pet care, legal services) and for some Internet­based business including email marketing services, consulting services or e-commerce services.

Those entities that mainly operate in virtual world and engage into some offline services or resources for marketing or order fulfilment purposes are known as ‘Small and Home Office’ (SOHO) establishments. Due to rise in the number of these entities, various web based services and business softwares are created to cater to these kinds of netpreneurs who thrive their businesses through the internet medium.

As we research and experiment further between zero and one (language understood by computers), Netrpreneurship will be the face of future business, holding unimaginable potential for meteoric growth of not only businesses but also of people and their respective nations.

However, the business should also remain wary of the pitfalls of running online business. Online business may involve cyber crimes like hacking, phishing, morphing and so on.

5. International Entrepreneurship

It is the process by which a startup/venture or an established firms while capitalizing on creativity, risk taking and innovativeness, internationalize their operations across national boundaries. Through international entrepreneurship, an entity identifies an opportunity, configures its value chain, finalizes the geographical domain to be internationalized and finally picks the ways to reach the end customers in international markets.

International Entrepreneurship (IB) bolsters the growth prospects of a firm by pooling physical, financial, human, technological and capital resources across allied foreign markets meanwhile milking the economies of scale and also warding off the stiff competition at home as well as abroad.

Some of the prerequisites for international venturing may include factors like financial strength, global experience, Research and development expenses, age of the firm, size of the firm, network relations and global visions along with much needed environmental scanning.

The main difference between a domestic entrepreneurship and international entrepreneurship is seizing of opportunity at different geographical spaces. Though through both the processes, the entrepreneur riding high on his innovativeness and risk taking aims to create, recreate and finally deliver a product or service yet the orientation is different in both forms of entrepreneurship. In case of international entrepreneurship, networking across foreign partners in terms of institutions or organizations is paramount to the success rate of such ventures. While in domestic entrepreneurship, the entrepreneur leverages his innate talent, skills by pooling resources with in local settings.

This process of internatalization can be pursued by both new firms, i.e. by startups or even by established firms. When startups pursue it, they are known as ‘Born global firms’. These startups right from the stage of inception harbor international orientation and begin their operations at international level. For example, Logitech, the computer peripherals company, manufacturing even PCs today, has international orientation right from the beginning and expanded very rapidly after starting operations and R&D from California and Switzerland.

5.1 Definition

According to renowned researchers, Oviatt and McDougall (2005), International entrepreneurship is the discovery, enactment evaluation and exploitation of opportunities— across national borders—to create future goods and services.”

International entrepreneurship includes various outlets through which a small yet competitive firm can enter the foreign shores, including exports, licensing, international franchising , international cooperative alliances, counter trading and bartering as firm adapt themselves to not only survive but also grow in the backdrop of cut throat competition (Hara and Kanai, 1994). For example companies like Adidas, PepsiCo., KFC, Starbucks etc. have international operations all over the world.

Further it will also include new joint venture, IPO, when entrepreneurial activities require networking and resources to further penetrate and act as ‘Local while being Global’.

However as per the life cycle (Vernon 1979) and internationalization (Johanson & Vahlne 1977) theories,

“a firm enters international markets successively starting from exporting and then gradually maturing towards stages like franchising, contract manufacturing and finally relocation of production to overseas location (FDI)”.

Therefore, to begin with large number of start-ups may resort to exporting before leapfrogging their way in international market by gradually embracing FDI. Especially for Small and Medium size enterprises, exporting is promising opportunity through which they can gain knowledge of international markets, marketing scenario, relevant rules and regulations and later leverage their learning and experiences to relocate their production to overseas locations also.

5.2 Difference Between Domestic Entrepreneurship and International Entrepreneurship

5.3 Factors to be Considered While Entering Foreign Markets

A careful analysis of following factors have to be done before the entrepreneur can decide to venture into international market –

• Country Specific factors –

1. 1. Political factors
   2. Business related policies and environment
   3. General laws and regulations
   4. Host of benefits and protection available to foreign firm
   5. Legal framework
   6. Cultural factors including the customers profile