Corporate Entrepreneurship: Enabling Students To Climb The Staircase To An Entrepreneurial Journey

Over the years, management students have witnessed a paradigm shift in terms of teaching pedagogy. Institutes have weighed the importance of fostering entrepreneurship spirit within the students. Students who are industrious about entrepreneurship and are keen to tread a path where they can offer their skills and expertise by working for their own self or for small businesses have been provided with various platforms to showcase their abilities. Incubation hubs, competitions, scholarships are often provided by institutes to enable students to start their own venture. However, to thrive in a highly competitive market, large businesses and big scale corporates are encouraging corporate entrepreneurship in the organizations. The reason is to empower their employees as internal change agents and also compete with newer organizations whose culture, innovation, vision has been built in recent years and are hugely filling the market gap.  

Enterprises are on a constant lookout to innovate and develop. But, corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship demands managers and executives to work within an existing system. To support companies accelerate growth and also help students to explore their entrepreneurial abilities, institutes are including corporate entrepreneurship courses in their curriculum. The fundamental experiential nature of this subject helps students to implement the theoretical learning efficiently in the practical scenario.  

An undergraduate course in corporate entrepreneurship can help students to imbibe the necessary skills to join a corporate setup and give a direction to a firm’s efforts in innovating and developing their services further. Following are the ways in which students can benefit from a course in corporate entrepreneurship:  

1. Idea generation and validation skills: The first step to innovate in a corporate set up is to strategize with key stakeholders. This happens through brainstorming sessions, group discussions and crowdsourcing activities. If a student pursues a BBA or any other undergraduate course in corporate entrepreneurship, they are equipped with creative skills through group activities, case studies which gives them a platform to generate ideas and think out loud in the right direction. The most successful corporate innovation strategies are backed by a well-informed and thorough market research which is taught to students in the course. 

2. Communicating the Idea: The idea generation process is effective only when the idea is presented and communicated in a proper way. A concrete plan that resonates with the overall vision of the company along with strong financial returns are something that is expected from corporate entrepreneurs. Students need to possess active soft skills and build them throughout their undergraduate management program to become an effective presenter. 

3. Profit Center for the company - A corporate entrepreneur brings in huge profits for the company by pitching a great innovative idea. This is the reason why corporates are encouraging corporate entrepreneurship since an existing team of employees can help them innovate and bring in profits without additional resource cost.   

4. Accelerates change in the company - A corporate entrepreneur helps the company to grow and accelerates change. Risk-averse culture, resistance to change are some challenges that prevent organizations to adapt to a new culture. On the contrary, new organizations and startups tap on the new dynamics of the market to create opportunities. Corporate Entrepreneurs shows a new path of innovation and a holistic plan to adapt and be resilient to the change through their strategic approach. 

Corporate Entrepreneurship has become a business imperative in the dynamic business environment and with innovative startups emerging in the business scenario. A business course in corporate entrepreneurship is the need of the hour to help students build the necessary skills to effectively benefit the organization that they join. 

Dr Adya Sharma

Guest Author The author is Director, SCMS Pune