Entrepreneurship is important for organizations facing rapid change in industry, market structure, customers' needs, technological advancements, and societal values. Entrepreneurship draws from a wide range of skills capable of enhancement to add value to a targeted niche of human activity. On the other hand, corporate entrepreneurship is also viewed as acting entrepreneurially within the confines of an established organization. Relevant to that is the organizational culture, which is the set of values and beliefs behind individuals' attitudes, behavior, and performance within organizations. For organizational excellence to succeed, it needs to be supported and driven by top management whose role is to empower and enable employees toward excellence through continuous improvement.
TopWhat Is Entrepreneurship?
This section defines the term entrepreneurship and the traits of an entrepreneur as a means of setting the scene for explaining corporate entrepreneurship and the role it plays in enhancing organisational performance.
The term Entrepreneur has been used initially by Austrian American Economist Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950) in which he explained that entrepreneurs are the main agents for economic growth through the creation of new methods of production i.e. creating innovations which stimulated economic evolution. Furthermore, Schumpeter introduced the concept of “creative destruction” which means that entrepreneurs continually substitute or destroy existing products or methods of products with new ones. Nevertheless, there is a positive result from this creative destruction which is creating new technologies and new products to fit the continual change in customers’ needs e.g. technological advancements in the telecommunication field (e.g. computers, telephones and internet), the transportation field (e.g. automobiles, airplanes .etc.…) the production field and the medical field. Moreover, creative destruction also helps overall economic improvement (Schumpeter, 2011 and Schumpeter, 1942 in Cox and Alm, 2008).
Entrepreneurship is the willingness to take risks and develop, organize and manage a business venture in a competitive global marketplace that is constantly evolving. Entrepreneurs are pioneers, innovators, leaders and inventors. Erkkila (2000) identified entrepreneurs by the following traits: flexible, creative, autonomous, problem solver, need to achieve, imaginative, believe in control on one’s destiny, leadership, working hard, initiative, persuasive and moderate risk taker.
Tony et al (2018) reiterated that entrepreneurship is doing a new thing or transforming an existing business concept into a new venture with the aim of high growth; hence, it contributes immensely by creating new jobs, reducing poverty and generating income for both governments and individuals. Furthermore, the authors (Tony et al. 2018, p. 127) provided the following acronym to the term entrepreneurship.