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Can British Firms Succeed At Intrapreneurship?


Are american-led businesses better equipped "culturally" to outperform their British peers when it comes to corporate entrepreneurship and launching new businesses or lines of businesses? I have conducted business across Europe, Asia, South America and North America so I am very familiar with differences in business culture and etiquette. I was reading two articles recently on the differences in business cultures across continents and while not wanting to create stereotypes that capture a whole country, it was interesting to see the following reported as clear differences between British and American business cultures. This led me to question how a nation's business culture can affect its intrapreneurship aspirations.

These articles pointed to some common traits amongst British business people and how they:

1. Place a high value on work-life balance and make it a point to create family and personal time.

2. Frown upon people who try to sell themselves or come across as selling their ideas too aggressively. This is judged to be self-promotion and is ridiculed.

3. Are not very fond of emotional and expressive co-workers. Over enthusiastic individuals are avoided.

4. Value hierarchy and the chain command and like to take time to reflect upon things before making decisions.

In my experience with intrapreneurship, and as summarized in the book Winning at Intrapreneurship, winning intrapreneurs share 19 common characteristics. These include passion, energetic, and decisiveness. In addition, they must be able to sell their new business idea and their ability to deliver the business plan while being willing to put extremely long hours at work to successfully launch a new business within an existing company. Finally, intrapreneurial companies must remove chain of command barriers to encourage good ideas to be exposed to the senior leadership team quickly and provide much autonomy to entrepreneurs charged with taking innovations to market. All these go against the 4 points listed above, which could lead one to conclude that a national culture can place some businesses at a disadvantage in the game of intrapreneurship. But then, there is Sir Richard Branson and the Virgin Group...go figure.

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