Research Studies

"The Entrepreneurial Flame: How to Keep it Burning Brightly in Your Company"

Howard Muson
The Conference Board, December 2003.

Available Online

This Executive Action report from the Conference Board examines how to maintain the “motivation and enthusiasm of your most creative, entrepreneurial-minded employees” in good times and bad. Findings were based on interviews with the leaders of a number of innovative companies, including W.L. Gore, Cascade Engineering and Walker Parking Consultants, as well as various experts who have dealt with this problem. The report concludes that to manage growth leadership must:

1. Understand that innovation can be messy and unpredictable, and often “takes place out of bounds.”
2. Encourage free and open discussion of new ideas, unencumbered by bureaucracy.
3. Decentralize the decision making authority.
4. Identify and reward “sponsors” – powerful executives who can remove obstacles to innovation – as well as the innovators themselves.
5. Design fair procedures for screening which ideas and projects will be pursued further and which ones will not.

The report includes a brief assessment tool to gauge your firm’s level of entrepreneurial spirit.

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