Of late, I am beginning to at least experience a love with
enquiry I nursed long ago, and had to forego. That was when I first studied linkages between Entrepreneurial
Orientation and Learning styles. It is of some lament that in a world gone
global, my understanding is largely from one nation - India. It is also my joy,
that being here in India, I have seasoned professionals with whom I can bounce
such reflections. I write this short piece as a token of my appreciation for those who’ve helped my understanding.
1.
Venture creation is often a leap of individual
faith and investor confidence at times. Beyond the proof of concept and
business model success, CEOs and their top teams have less influence over
their organisations than they believe they do. An institutional effect in the
ecology of the business sector is more at play. Small and medium industry may
mistake their size for comfort in autonomy, when they may be skating on the
thin ice of a disappearing glacier. Such is the role of the business
environment as well.
2. Scale trumps scope in the near-term for some firms. Scale is
trumped when volume loses differentiation. Like the current state of the
Indian IT services industry, where low cost begat scale, and now differentiated
value eludes the customer. The CEO cannot determine such ecological balance of
his or her own accord. The paradox of entrepreneurship is about traversing from
social misfit to innovator to community champion. It is a paradox of
identity shifts across stages in the institution’s life cycle.
3. CEOs and their teams can orchestrate firm performance, provided they share
a mind-set around what results they want from a shared vision. CEOs need to
abandon their ‘leader’ image and mould with the wisdom in the group for
which collaboration produces value that none in the group could produce alone.
Leaders with individual power often dread giving up for the insecurity of
processes for leadership in organisational systems. Such tipping points are
moments of deep dialogue or shallow disconnects for the entrepreneur and
his/her team.
4. A Renter or Trader mind-set in governance afflicts early design of
organisations in risk-averse firms. Structures and communication protocols that
serve such designs will not be able to generate passion for intellectual property
or pioneering innovation. A change in such mind-set is about leadership courage
and vulnerability, both. The Renter can become a Statesman, provided he or
she embraces the technocracy of pioneers in the team. The paradox is of staying on a
accreting value chain without having to invest incremental time in acquiring
the unnatural identity of pioneering innovation.
5.
Markets are not decided by hard figures of funnel
size and feasibility studies as much as by buyer or sponsor intent and
motivation in the zone most proximate to value creation. Qualifying for purchase
intent is market intelligence as opposed to post-facto wisdom in lessons learnt
in pitching for business.
Facilitating such moments are a challenge and joy. The
challenge comes from lack of precedent in the relationship. The joy comes from
the opportunity to raise questions that delightfully make for progress. The
progress in small enterprise is not a function of ‘leader’ development alone.
It is about fuelling the aspirations of a team in alignment with shared purpose for which
the firm is created. Do small firms retain size specific autonomy? Do they rise
to overcome issues of size with a maturing team that enables even more people
to experience development of markets, customers and the ecosystem?
This is not a matter of policy paralysis in itself. It is the mitigation of risk in an environment where perceptions shift faster than providers can retain customer attention.
This is not a matter of policy paralysis in itself. It is the mitigation of risk in an environment where perceptions shift faster than providers can retain customer attention.
