Entrepreneurial Organsiations

Drawing on both your understanding of concepts and ideas covered during the module and your experience of working in a team, identify and evaluate the factors associated with the creation of an entrepreneurial organisation.

The term ‘entrepreneur’ is a derivative of the French term entreprendre meaning “to undertake”. It was first coined in the early 18th century by Richard Cantillon, who perceived an entrepreneur as risk taker (Hisrich and Peters 2002, p8). Jean-Baptiste Say furthered Cantillions’ ideas to include that entrepreneurs had to be leaders (Schumpeter, 1951 pp.248-250). Robinson et al. (2007, p.413) summarised views by saying, an entrepreneur is “a person who creates something of value and assumes the risk of building a business around it”.

Cooper and Bruno (1977) suggest that because team based ventures out do the ventures of an individual entrepreneur that entrepreneurial teams are the way forward. Kamm and Nurick (1993) explore the definition of entrepreneurial teams to include ‘new venture’ and ‘shared ownership’, but to answer the proposed question the assignment will attempt to establish the other factors entrepreneurial organisations can adopt, in order to become successful and the characteristics involved.

The Harvard Business Review (1994) claims that ‘cross functional teams (CFT’s)’ are becoming the cure for companies. Webber (2002, p.201) explains that CFTs are a collection of individuals with “diverse functional specializations” that work together in an organisation. Jackson et al. (1995) says these teams are being formed to enhance innovation with the belief of producing more creative thinking.

British Petroleum (BP) applied this team structure in order to try and develop gas and oil economically. The CFT from a vast range of disciplines enabled them to reconsider all aspects of the problem. By not looking at only technological aspects for a solution they came up with an “alliance” approach looking at the relationship between BP and...