Companies such as Hewlett-Packard and Danfoss, a Danish industrial transnational working within green tech, use several methods to develop an entrepreneurial culture and become more innovative. Business plan competitions are introduced to encourage intrapreneurship among employees, while a surrounding culture of entrepreneurship is created by hosting incubators.

In order to leverage entrepreneurial techniques to drive corporate innovation, Hewlett-Packard has introduced a business plan competition called Flashpoint. Within the second year of the competition, 150 teams consisting of 4-5 people from 23 countries competed on developing the best business idea. Each team is given a wikipedia page where the entire HP community is enabled to contribute through web 2.0 tools. The semi-finalists are chosen through a judging panel combined with a popular vote before the final vote by the board of directors.

In addition, Hewlett-Packard has created an incubation hub in their research facility in Corvallis, Oregon, where entrepreneurs and research institutions have been given free access to a building which is managed by the state of Oregon and the local technological university. This type of environment fosters an entrepreneurial mindset while creating innovation spill-overs. On an experimental basis, engineers have also been stationed in small start-ups companies in California to work on solving a specific problem and create a prototype in order to develop an entrepreneurial mindset of their own.

A very similar approach has been developed by Danfoss, within a very different sector. The company has created a comprehensive venture and incubator programme, “The Danfoss Golden Gate”, which helps develop new ideas from Danfoss employees globally. The program is part of a wider effort to change the culture of the company towards an entrepreneurial mindset to foster innovation and includes close collaboration with start-ups and a new reward program for entrepreneurial managers and employees within the company.

The companies use intrapreneurship as a way of changing the company culture towards opportunity recognition, a “go ahead and try it” mentality and an acceptance of failure. These are key capabilities when competing on innovation.

Source: FORA, 2009

For more details on this case, contact FORA at FORA@newnatureofinnovation.org.