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All successful companies have their roots in risk-taking — the big bets they made early on as a startup to set themselves apart. Once established, companies typically want to maintain this entrepreneurial spirit while leveraging their newfound scale.
The problem is, growth often comes with risk aversion. Large companies may say they prioritize entrepreneurship, but most struggle to execute. Employees are expected to perform their existing job functions and often lack the time or support to engage in the freewheeling creative thinking that made the company successful.
To continue to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace, leading companies must actively promote entrepreneurial thinking within their organizations. As the Jeffrey A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College, I have taught more than 10,000 people how to become more entrepreneurial over the course of 23 years.
To continue to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace, established businesses must actively foster entrepreneurship within their organizations by unlocking and channeling the existing creativity of their employees. Here are three strategies to help companies unleash the entrepreneurial spirit in their employees so they can stay relevant and continue to innovate.
Related: How to unleash your entrepreneurial spirit and discover your potential
1. Give your employees the time and resources to be creative
Entrepreneurship combines the ability to see or create an opportunity with the courage to act on it. Some organizations limit entrepreneurship to new product developers. But truly innovative companies recognize that entrepreneurial skills and behaviors depend on the talents of their entire workforce, not just a single department.
From HR to marketing, every employee can contribute to an entrepreneurial culture by improving internal operations, improving existing products, launching new business ventures, etc. But for a company to reap these benefits, employees need the time and resources to explore new ideas.
Try to generate funds for experimentation. Block time in employees’ schedules for creative thinking. Reducing 1 hour of overlapping meetings in a team of 10 people gives employees 10 hours of personal exploration. Don’t dismiss ideas if employees can’t yet make a strong business case. New, original products lack market data to support their innovation. Give employees the space and time to experiment and gather evidence.
Setting aside time for “innovation days” is also becoming an increasingly common strategy: Software company Atlassian allows employees to step away from their regular duties for 24 hours each quarter to work on something entirely new. The resulting innovations range from installing new energy-efficient lightbulbs in the office to making software faster.
Innovation Day is a great start. But for greatest success, entrepreneurship needs to become a consistent practice that employees live every day. Remember, it takes time to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset throughout your company. Start small in a few departments, then scale up the practice and grow the culture.
Related: How to be entrepreneurial with positivity and resilience
2. Allow room for failure
Failure is a key component of entrepreneurship, and many companies claim to value it. But ultimately, they tend to reward success within the company’s existing operations, rather than the courage to pursue new ideas that fail. Employees at these companies lack what Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson calls “psychological safety” — the feeling that it’s safe to take risks that are so important to learning, like asking for feedback or discussing mistakes.
Part of fostering psychological safety is helping employees understand that it’s no big deal if their low-risk explorations aren’t successful. Remind your team members that one of the benefits of being an established company is that it can absorb small failures. In fact, if employees are doing their jobs right, they should be prepared to fail. After all, not taking risks comes at a cost: stagnation.
Employees are hesitant to take risks because they fear negative feedback if they fail or because they believe playing it safe will lead to a higher chance of promotion. In truly entrepreneurial companies, employees are confident that taking risks, within limits, is accepted and rewarded. For example, Indian conglomerate Tata Group offers a “Dare to Try” award for brave attempts at innovation that fail. Celebrating entrepreneurial spirit in performance reviews can also encourage risk taking, whatever the consequences.
Related: 4 ways to foster entrepreneurship in your company
3. Innovate with intent
Entrepreneurship isn’t about aimlessly exploring until you stumble upon the next big thing. It’s about leveraging your company’s existing resources for new endeavors that align with your bigger picture goals.
Imagine a solar power company with a mission to advance green energy. Innovating with intent means asking how your existing skills and technologies can help you achieve your environmental goals outside of your current products. You’re pursuing the same mission and relying on the foundational knowledge you know, just in a different way.
Encourage your employees to think about what innovations they can pursue and where their talents would be most useful. Perhaps there is an opportunity to apply existing expertise to a long-standing problem or bring previous insights to a new field with unexpected connections. For example, Suzuki, the car and motorcycle company, leveraged its original expertise in building looms to develop engine-powered bicycles and later increasingly large vehicles.
Let employees know about the time, funding, and other resources available for experimentation, and ensure that support is given to projects that grow and show true potential.
Unlike a startup, you’re not starting from scratch. When it comes to entrepreneurship, established companies have huge advantages: financial stability, community ties, loyal customers, and a large, talented workforce are all valuable resources that fuel new kinds of growth and innovation. But to unlock this potential, you need to give your employees the time and resources to be creative, give them room to fail, and encourage them to think big within the means at hand.
