Premium Essay

Entrepreneurial Innovation or Corporate Advantage?

In: Business and Management

Submitted By gmacdonald
Words 1137
Pages 5
Entrepreneurial Innovation or Corporate Advantage?
The competitive advantages of Wegmans & how we can apply private innovation to public returns on investment.
By Garrett Macdonald, Corporate Finance Major at St. John Fisher College - 2014

Why is Wegmans ranked as #1 by consumers?
1. Their Employee Satisfaction – The “biggies”

a) Wegmans has a program called “Competitive Pay” that grants employees the benefit of often being the highest paid employees in their industry. This enables them to attract (in most cases) above average employees compared to their industry competitors! b) Wegmans uses vertical integration. They control almost every aspect of their business (don’t outsource normally) including their own; marketing, legal, engineering (design & building of stores and in-store fixtures), event services, store maintenance, & more. c) Wegmans gives generous scholarships for part time (min. hr. requirement) & full-time employees, including a double scholarship opportunity for full-time employee’s parents. d) Wegmans allows its employees the opportunity to participate in firm-specific investments whereby senior members of staff can exploit geographical trends in food, goods, & services to better serve their customers while being rewarded for their outstanding performance. This builds internal innovation between stores and thus between competitors. e) Internal promotion – often overlooked in a company’s policies, but can often speak to the company’s ability to promote individuals who have a sense of the company’s vision & can provide crucial feedback that’s necessary to increase production. 2. Their Consumer Gratification – A socially complex relationship between Wegmans & us a) Loyalty – you don’t need to ask a Western New Yorker where they shop for groceries. The majority of them are shopping at Wegmans and love every minute of it. Why? i. Wegmans is a huge

Similar Documents

Premium Essay

Entrepreneurial Strategy

...Entrepreneurship and Innovation Session 3: Entrepreneurial Strategy Baden U’Ren buren@bond.edu.au Level 4, Room 9 5595 2212 Overview  Review of the readings  Innovation and Entrepreneurship  Entrepreneurship in a Corporate Context  Entrepreneurial Strategy What is Innovation? Something NEW that creates VALUE What is Innovation? “Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or service. It is capable of being presented as a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced” - Peter Drucker Source: Schaper & Volery (2007) Entrepreneurship and Small Business 2nd Edition. Wiley. p.69  Creativity  ideas, concepts & inventions  Innovation  the process of development and commercialisation  Entrepreneurship  couples opportunities and resources Innovation Exploit Incremental Explore Radical Kirzner The producer-entrepreneur •Alert and responsive to opportunities that exist •Exploits disorder (gaps) to move the market back to equilibrium Schumpeter The innovator-entrepreneur: •Creates products and processes to disturb market equilibrium •Creates opportunities Innovation & Performance Some ‘stylised facts’ about the relationships between innovation and performance:  Relationships between R&D, patents, new products and performance are strongest at the industry level, weakest at the firm level  Returns from process innovation are typically...

Words: 733 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Introduction to Corporate Entrepreneurship

...Introduction to Corporate Entrepreneurship Executive Summary Entrepreneurship is the process or application that drives creation and development of creative and innovative ideas (Frederick and Kuratko 2010). It involves market changes through systematic process to assist in the identification and address of new business opportunities (Alizadeh 2012). Corporate entrepreneurship is about the total process whereby organisations act in an innovative, risk-taking and proactive (Bouchard 2010) ways to help organisations, similar to entrepreneurship of creative and innovative thinking, however, the keyword for corporate entrepreneurship is ‘Organisation’. The aim of this manual was to describe and give an overview of corporate entrepreneurship to senior management and provide the necessary information and updates for an organisation to implement entrepreneurial thinking with its’ internal resources within its organisation. The manual will provides insightful information through the principle types and various dimensions of corporate entrepreneurship. The manual also included the journey through the various generations of innovation process models from simple to full integration models. To promote corporate entrepreneurship within organisation, a framework serving as best practices was discussed in the manual to support smooth adoption and implementation of corporate entrepreneurship. The manual will put emphasis on the different focal areas of corporate entrepreneurship such...

Words: 3016 - Pages: 13

Premium Essay

Entrepreneurship Leadership in the 21st Century

...The past thirty years have witnessed the most powerful emergence of entrepreneurial activity in the world. Entrepreneurs are now described as aggressive catalysts for change in the world of business; individuals who recognize opportunities where others see chaos, contradiction, or confusion. They have been compared to Olympic athletes challenging themselves to break new barriers, to longdistance runners dealing with the agony of the miles, to symphony orchestra conductors who balance the different skills and sounds into a cohesive whole, or to top-gun pilots who continually push the envelope of speed and daring. The U.S. economy has been revitalized because of the efforts of entrepreneurs, and the world has turned now to free enterprise as a model for economic development. The passion and drive of entrepreneurs move the world of business forward as they challenge the unknown and continuously create the future (Kuratko, 2002). Several methods have been used to measure the impact of entrepreneurial ventures on the economy—for example, efforts to start a firm (which may not be successful), incorporation of a firm (which may never go into business), changes in net tax returns filed (reflecting new filings minus filings no longer received), and a substantial amount of full-time and part-time self-employment. According to the Small Business Administration, 672,000 new businesses were created in 2005; the largest in US history (even 12% higher than the...

Words: 6402 - Pages: 26

Premium Essay

Factors Affecting the Academic Performance of Bstm Students

...REFLECTING ON CAREER IMPLICATIONS… ((CHAPTER 1—INTRODUCTION) REFLECTING ON CAREER IMPLICATIONS… 1. Attributes of Strategic Management: How do your activities and actions contribute to the goals of your organization? Observe the decisions you make on the job. What are the short-term and long-term implications of your decisions and actions? Have you recently made a decision that might yield short-term profits but might negatively impact the long-term goals of the organization (e.g., cutting maintenance expenses to meet a quarterly profit target)? 2. Intended versus Emergent Strategies: Don’t be too inflexible in your career strategies; strive to take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. Many promising career opportunities may “emerge” that were not part of your intended career strategy or your specific job assignment. Take initiative by pursuing opportunities to get additional training (e.g., learn a software or a statistical package), volunteering for a short-term overseas assignment, etc. 3. Ambidexterity: Avoid defining your role in the organization too narrowly; look for opportunities to leverage your talents and your organization’s resources to create value for your organization. This often involves collaborating with people in other departments or with your organization’s customers and suppliers. 4. Strategic Coherence: Focus your efforts on the “big picture” in your organization. In doing this, you should always strive...

Words: 2235 - Pages: 9

Premium Essay

Miss

...iness, general; Business, internationalCopyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 American Society for Competitiveness ISSN: 1077-0097 Issue: Date: Annual, 2005 Source Volume: 13 Source Issue: 1 Topic: Event Code: 200 Management dynamics Computer Subject: Company business management Geographic: Geographic Scope: United States Geographic Code: 1USA United States Accession Number: 138408287 Full Text: ABSTRACT This study explored means and ways that can help CEOs achieve wealth for their firms in the era of globalization. Using a sample of CEOs of MNCs, the findings of this study indicated that the majority of the CEOs agreed that many of the activities undertaken by organizations in an attempt to achieve wealth occur within six domains: Innovations, networks, internationalization, organizational learning, top management team and governance, and growth orientation. Critical challenges facing top management and the suggested recommendations were acknowledged by the participating CEOs. INTRODUCTION There is a general agreement regarding positive effects entrepreneurship has on firms' efforts for creating wealth (Lyon, Lumpkin, & Dess, 2000). Entrepreneurship is defined as a context, dependent social process through which individuals and teams create wealth by bringing together unique packages of resources to exploit marketplace opportunities (Ireland, Hirt, Camp, and Sexton, 2001). According to Barringer and Bluedorn (1999), this definition suggests that if a firm gains access...

Words: 7684 - Pages: 31

Premium Essay

When We Think of Entrepreneurship, We Often Think of Small, Start-Up Firms. Describe How a Large Corporation in an Established Industry Can Be “Entrepreneurial” and Discuss How Peng’s Entrepreneurial Strategies Apply in This Situation

...When we think of entrepreneurship, we often think of small, start-up firms. Describe how a large corporation in an established industry can be “entrepreneurial” and discuss how Peng’s entrepreneurial strategies apply in this situation. Entrepreneurship as a scholarly field seeks to understand how opportunities to bring into existence future goods and services are discovered created and exploited, by whom and with what consequence (Venkataraman,1997). Entrepreneurship is nothing but the identification of those resources which were previously unexplored. Entrepreneurial opportunities do not only take the form of new products and services, they can also take the form of new methods of production, new raw materials, new ways of organising and new markets. For large corporations in an established industry, entrepreneurship is a big challenge. The companies must innovate and develop new ideas in order to motivate their leaders for entrepreneurship. Two steps must be followed to achieve this goal. Firstly, companies must periodically evaluate its product performance and need to have complete information about the environment in which it is operating. Secondly, in order to achieve success, the companies must experiment with their existing products. They should have their one face focused on the old strategy and the other seeking out the new one. When an existing company starts new venture, it face lot of barriers because it is a risky proposition. They must consider industry’s condition...

Words: 383 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Entrepreneurial Oreintation on Entrepreneurial Innovativenes:

...THE ROLE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL OREINTATION ON ENTREPRENEURIAL INNOVATIVENES: A CASE STUDY OF SMALL AND MEDIUM SCALE ENTREPRISE IN LAGOS STATE, NIGERIA BY FATOYE, MUSTAPHA OBI 08S04/046 BEING A RESEACH PROJECT SUMITTED TO THE DEPARMENT OF BUSNESS ADMINISTRATION, FACULTY OF SOCIAL AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCES, AJAYI CROWTHER UNIVERSITY, OYO IN PARTICAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF BARCHELOR OF SCIENCE (B.S.C) DEGREE IN BUSINESS ADMINISTARTION (MANAGEMENT OPTION) JULY, 2012 CERTIFICATION This is to certify that this project was written by FATOYE MUSTAPHA OBI (MARICULATION NUMBER 08S04/046) in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of bachelor of science (B.S.c) degree in business administration (management option) of the department of business administration, faculty of social and management sciences, Ajayi Crowther university, Oyo, Oyo State. MR. P.A Akanbi ....................... (Project supervisor) Date DR. O.E Ofoegbu ........................ (HOD, Business Administration) Date PROF. S.O. Akano ....................... (Dean, SMS) Date .............................. ........................ EXTERNAL EXAMINER Date DEDICATION This work is dedicated to God Almighty who generously gave me the strength, health and other resources to successfully accomplish this research. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This period of my life had been a period of trials and revelation but...

Words: 14116 - Pages: 57

Premium Essay

Strategic Managment Study Guide

...Chapter 7: * Merger: a strategy through which two firms agree to integrate their operations on a relatively co-equal basis * Acquisition: a strategy through which one firm buys a controlling, or 100% interest in another firm with the intent of making the acquired firm a subsidiary business within its portfolio. After acquisition, management of the acquired firm report s to the management of the acquiring firm * Takeover: a special type of acquisition when the target firm did not solicit the acquiring firm’s bid for outright ownership * Friendly acquisition: the management of the target firm wants the firm to be acquired * Unfriendly acquisition (hostile takeover): the management of the target firm does not want the firm to be acquired (direct negotiations with the firm’s owners; tender offer; bear hug) Explain the popularity of acquisition strategies in firms competing in the global economy * There are seven reasons why acquisitions in firms competing in the global economy work * Increased Market Power: * This is the primary reason for acquisition * If a firm achieves enough market power, it can become market leader * Example: AT&T acquisition with T-Mobile made them in the lead with market share in w-ireless service providers * Also, not only would their market share increase, but their customers would increase by 1/3 and all cell towers and wireless spectrum that t-mobile had would also turn to AT&T ...

Words: 7561 - Pages: 31

Premium Essay

Corporate Entrepreneurship

...fundamental purpose of this book – and, it follows, of the course? The fundamental purpose of this book is to teach us the great importance of corporate entrepreneurship and innovation that helps companies sustain their competitive advantage. Companies today know that they must be faster, more flexible, more aggressive and more innovative in order to maintain the competitive edge. The focus is on creating work environments where entrepreneurship is not the exception, it is the norm. Therefore, the purpose of this course is to teach and challenge us to develop and defend our opinions regarding the matters related to corporate entrepreneurship. We will then take these ideas, concepts, tools, and frameworks to which they are exposed and apply them in a series of real world cases and contexts. 2.) What, then, is the fundamental choice that established companies are being faced with? The fundamental choice that established companies are being faced with is the choice of whether or not to start using “new management thinking” or sticking to their old methods. Companies today are forced to be able to adapt, adjust and redefine themselves to be able to sustain their competitive advantage. They must continually accept new ideas, methods, and things that haven’t been tried before. The only way to sustain that competitive advantage or get a jump on the competition is to be continually innovative in coming up with new bright ideas. 3.) What are the two key environments that...

Words: 1430 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

Entrepreneurship

...management which, potentially, offers the venture a way of combining the flexibility and responsiveness of the entrepreneurial with the market power and reduced risk of the established organisation’ Gifford Pinchot, in the mid-80s, created the word “intrapreneur” which described employees of large businesses who were hired to behave and think like entrepreneurs. Pinchot defined intrapreneurship as “behaving like an entrepreneur when you’re employed at a large corporation for the benefit of the corporation as a whole” and believed that being appointed as an intrapreneur before giving a shot at entrepreneurship is a great method developing management skills and techniques before stepping into the entrepreneurial world. Apart from just a set of skills and great techniques there are also personality and character qualities that make up a successful intrapreneur or entrepreneur. “The most successful are risk takers who are driven by a vision of something that is better in the world,” Pinchot says. “They are honest and use a balance of intuition and analysis to make their decisions.” Other scholars have defined intrapreneurship in many different of ways. Expressions such as corporate entrepreneurship (Burgelman, 1983, Vesper, 1984; Guth and Ginsberg, 1990; Hornsby et al., 1993, Stopford and Baden-Fuller, 1994), corporate venturing (MacMillan, 1986; Vesper, 1990), and internal corporate entrepreneurship (Schollhammer, 1981, 1982; Jones and Butler, 1992) have been used to describe the phenomenon...

Words: 3622 - Pages: 15

Premium Essay

Corporate Entrepreneurship at Google

...| Corporate Entrepreneurship | Strategic Management II | | MDI Gurgaon | 8/9/2014 | | Group 8 13P131 Ashir Madaan 13P168 Shivang Gupta 13P170 Shweta Verma 13P172 Siddharth Gautam 13P174 SK Armaan Sarkar 13P175 Sohan Shetty Contents Executive Summary 3 1. Introduction 4 2. Corporate Entrepreneurship 5 3. Google & Corporate Entrepreneurship 5 4. Strategies followed by Google 5 4.1 Involvement of top leadership 5 4.2 Project Kennedy 5 4.3 Launch & Iterate 5 4.4 Lead Users 5 4.5 Leveraging employees for fostering innovation 5 4.6 TGIFs & FIXITS 5 4.7 Googlegeist 5 4.8 Google Moderator 5 4.9 Google X & Moonshot mentality 5 4.10 Recruitment policy 5 5. Google’s eight pillars of Innovation 5 6. Results 5 7. Issues faced by Google with respect to Corporate Entrepreneurship 5 8. Conclusion 5 9. References 5 Executive Summary Corporate Entrepreneurship is a concept in Strategy whereby companies in order to trigger innovation in their organization tap into the entrepreneurial ability of its employees. The process of innovation can vary and methods are different for mature organizations and young organizations. In this project we have tried to review the how corporate entrepreneurship is employed in Google to innovate its products and services. As Google is a young...

Words: 7731 - Pages: 31

Free Essay

Entrepreneurial Intensity in Communities

...Factors influencing entrepreneurial intensity in communities Sibylle Heilbrunn Department of Business Administration, Ruppin Academic Center, Israel Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors influencing entrepreneurial intensity. More specifically the study addresses the following objectives: propose a way to measure entrepreneurial intensity within the community context in order to determine entrepreneurial activity over a period of ten years, detect the factors influencing the entrepreneurial intensity, and finally locate Kibbutz communities on the entrepreneurial grid. Design/methodology/approach – Kibbutz communities are the level of analysis. Using a comprehensive questionnaire, a sample of 60 Kibbutzim – constituting 22 percent of the population of Kibbutz communities in Israel – was investigated over a period of ten years. The same questionnaire was administered to the same sample Kibbutzim (Kibbutzim is the plural of Kibbutz) in 1994, 1997 and 2004. Collected data include number and types of enterprises, economic strength, organizational size and age, and features of organizational structure and culture. Findings – Quantitative data analysis revealed a significant increase of entrepreneurial activity of Kibbutz communities in terms of frequency, degree and intensity of entrepreneurship. Organizational size and age have an impact on entrepreneurial intensity as well as the existence of an “entrepreneurial vehicle.” On the entrepreneurial grid Kibbutzim...

Words: 6120 - Pages: 25

Free Essay

Corporate Entrepreneruship Nokia

...Corporate Entrepreneurship Assignment Name of Student: Hazeem Azam Naz Dar Company: Nokia (a) Discuss ways in which Nokia could achieve sustainable competitive advantage There are four ways Nokia gain competitive advantage: 1) Cost Leadership 2) Differentiation 3) Cost Focus 4) Differentiation Focus Cost leadership: With this strategy, the objective is to become the lowest-cost producer in the industry. Simply being amongst the lowest-cost producers is not good enough, as you leave yourself wide open to attack by other low-cost producers who may undercut your prices and therefore block your attempts to increase market share. The traditional method to achieve this objective is to produce on a large scale which enables the business to exploit economies of scale. There are two main ways for achieving this: a) Increasing profits by reducing costs, while charging industry-average prices. b) Increasing market share through charging lower prices, while still making a reasonable profit on each sale because you've reduced costs. A strategy of cost leadership requires close cooperation between all the functional areas of a business. To be the lowest-cost producer, a firm is likely to achieve or use several of the following: * High levels of productivity * High capacity utilisation * Use of bargaining power to negotiate the lowest prices for production inputs * Lean production methods (e.g. JIT) * Effective use of technology in...

Words: 1957 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

Innovation and Entrepreneurial Culture

...An entrepreneurial culture within an organization means having a culture that cultivates behaviors & values and a system that fosters creativity and innovation. “Innovation is the development of new values through solutions that meet new needs, inarticulate needs, or old customer and market needs in value adding new ways.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture. This culture will sponsor an individual’s need for creativity and higher aspirations. Informing and educating all new employees as they are brought into the fold will foster an environment to create new or improved systems, enhanced products and a more competitive place in the market. Entrepreneurial organizations seek opportunities for innovation: 1. New Products: When a company supports and encourages an innovative environment it tends to lead to new ideas, products and services. These can be tangible or intangible but both will lead to the generation or development of something new. A company can have a research and development department or do a SWOT analysis or consumer marketing to generate new ideas. 2. Improves efficiency: A company when efficient reduces costs or improves their services. A company’s primary goal is to make money. When efficient a company can perform the same objective or end product for less money, time or labor by producing less waste, expense and unnecessary effort. Finding new innovative ways to be efficient can increase profitability and productivity. 3. Product...

Words: 467 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Entrepreneurship

...A brief discussion of the relationship between entrepreneurship, innovation and economic development as well as the role of sustainability in the relationship Introduction: The origin and development on theory As early as the 17th century, the French term "entreprendre "appeared in economics, which evolved into "entrepreneur" as commonly used (Dees,1998). The concept of entrepreneur keeps on developing and varies with the development of socio-economics. Richard Cantillon published his in 1775 “Essay on the Nature of Trade in General" (Murphy,1986). Since then, entrepreneurship was given a definition in the perspective of behavior, including decision-making, sound judgment, supervision of production, innovation, and resource reallocation (Herron, 1993). The new definition of the "entrepreneur" credited by French economists was put by Jean Baptiste in the 19th century "the entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield". In this time, entrepreneurship was given the meaning of "creating values"(Dees, 1998). In 1911, “entrepreneur as innovator” was put forward by Schumpeter. In his theory, entrepreneurship nearly the same as innovation is thought to be a critical factor in the promotion of economic development. This theory was unceasingly completed by Schumpeter. Through the process of “disruptive innovation” (Schumpeter, 1942), entrepreneurs create economic opportunities and obtain economic benefits by causing...

Words: 2375 - Pages: 10