Stop worshipping unicorns. Your firm can be entrepreneurial

It’s hardly surprising that more people want to work for start-ups. Where else do they get the chance to stretch themselves, build something new and hustle for a big payout?

According to an EY and Economic Innovation Group survey, 78% of millennials call entrepreneurs successful and 62% have considered launching their own business. But are start-ups the only way to inspire ingenuity?

Over the years, Gary Hamel, Visiting Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, has watched global CEOs along with finance and economic ministers pay tribute to Silicon Valley. They trek to California in the hope that they’ll find answers, demanding to know how to incentivise risk-taking and foster creativity.
But in their quest for an entrepreneurial edge, they’re asking the wrong questions and looking in the wrong places, according to Professor Hamel.

The upstart appeal

“Start-ups get the best from people. They tend to be bold and break new ground. Teams are small and roles are loosely defined,” says Professor Hamel. Resource scarcity forces small firms to do more with less. Their flatter structures also mean that “people are judged on their contribution” and not their title.

In 2002, Professor Hamel argued in his book, Leading the Revolution, that companies needed to adopt a radical new innovation agenda to thrive. He wrote then about the need for firms to harness the imagination of every employee and create vibrant internal markets for ideas, capital and talent. Some did, most didn’t.
Now, as then, the old guard – large, traditional firms – lose out to innovative upstarts.