Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management: Similarities, Differences, and Examples

This article explores the concepts of innovation management and entrepreneurship, highlighting their similarities and differences. It provides examples of each and discusses key motivators for selecting entrepreneurship. Additionally, it delves into the role of innovation champions in fostering innovation within organizations. Course code, course name, and college/university are not mentioned.

Entrepreneurship
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Table of Contents
The concepts of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship.................................................................2
Innovation management..........................................................................................................................2
Entrepreneurship.....................................................................................................................................2
Similarities..............................................................................................................................................2
Differences..............................................................................................................................................2
Example of Innovation Management.......................................................................................................3
Example of Entrepreneurship..................................................................................................................3
Key motivators that help an individual to select entrepreneurship...............................................................3
Discussion of the concept of gazelles..........................................................................................................4
Examples of motivations in Entrepreneurship.........................................................................................4
Examples of Gazelle Company................................................................................................................5
The role of innovation champions in fostering innovation within organizations.....................................5
Importance of Innovation Champions in Organizations..............................................................................6
Illustration of Innovation Champions with examples..............................................................................6
References...................................................................................................................................................7
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The concepts of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship
Innovation management
The blending of innovative methods with the management of products, industries, and
organizations is known as innovation management (Dees, 2017). The concept of innovative
management permits the executives and the engineers to work together with the aim of a
common objective. It also permits the companies to react to any new prospects and to create
some innovative concepts and products.
Entrepreneurship
The procedure of planning, starting and running a new business is known as entrepreneurship,
and those persons involved in entrepreneurship are known as entrepreneurs (Kazanjian, Drazin,
& Glynn, 2017). An entrepreneur is a person who has a plan to work and produce business which
people would accept and build an organization by supporting the desired deals.
The similarities and differences between the two concepts
Similarities
Innovative management is the method of presenting innovative ideas to the existing businesses
(Hitt, & Duane Ireland, 2017). The method is not restricted to small industries or inventive
persons who work in their garage.
Whereas entrepreneurship is also the process of presenting innovative ideas but the ideas for
more for individual incentives. Most entrepreneurs are creative employees and could perceive
the needs of the clients or the technical growths in a new and innovative way.
Differences
Both are interconnected terms in the professional world, but there are also vital differences
between the two.
Innovative management is using one’s inventive mind to find any particular plans and to provide
solutions for executing that plan. It is a technical development which allows people to do what
they had not done before. The growth is determined by the innovative management, and a good
innovator could become wealthy by this inventions (Cooper, & Folta, 2017).
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Entrepreneurship, on the other hand, is using the innovative management to turn the ideas into
reality. It is a social development which allows people to do what they had not done before. The
entrepreneurs grab the chance to create businesses and take the inventions onwards. The growth
is determined by the entrepreneurship, and a good entrepreneur would become wealthier than the
good innovator.
Two examples each for Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship
Example of Innovation Management
The example of innovation management is the company of Pitney Bowes who desires to develop
the communication between their workers to create new plans. The company restructured their
private workplace to create an atmosphere of a peaceful village with its coffee shop. This change
in the office makes the staffs comfortable, and the company saw a remarkable profit (Illumine,
2013).
Example of Entrepreneurship
The example of entrepreneurship is Facebook created by Mark Zuckerberg who started
Facebook, not with the aim of developing it as a company but to personally satisfying a universal
necessity for connection. In less than a few years the entrepreneurship of Zuckerberg could be
opposed by very few people (Wilson, 2018).
Key motivators that help an individual to select entrepreneurship
The motivations that push people to select entrepreneurship are as follows:
 Money – Most entrepreneurs get in entrepreneurship at least to some extent to earn huge
amount of money. Any devoted businessman with good planning and skill could earn
more money than the small businessman (Farhangmehr, Gonçalves, & Sarmento, 2016).
If their only aim is to earn money, then they would become upset when they would not be
able to make revenue in the first few years.
 Flexible Way of Working – Working as an entrepreneur means working in one's way
like working in one's own time and setting one's aims and goals. But that does not mean
that one would work for less time or work under less pressure.
 The controller of Business – The aim to control motivates many people in business to
achieve the position of a leader. In entrepreneurship, the businessmen have full authority
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over every single decision taken under them. On the other hand, there would be more
pressure in carrying out these decisions. One would earn the profit from one's own
business, but if there is any loss, one has to take the blame to oneself.
 Working in a Team – An independent businessman could select own members of one's
team (Turner, & Pennington, 2015). They do not have to concern about the team that one
does not like to work with. It would be like working with the family with some partial
differences.
 Inheritance of Business - Few businessmen would like to turn out to be the face value of
their company and also earn the reputation for themselves. They may also want to pass
the company on the forthcoming generation. In one word, it means the businessmen
desire to leave behind them something significant for the future generation.
Discussion of the concept of gazelles
Examples of motivations in Entrepreneurship
The example of motivations in entrepreneurship is of Walt Disney, the owner of the Disneyland.
Once he told one of his staff that his brother would not give him money to make motion pictures
so whether the staff would help him to get money from Disneyland. The particular staff formed a
group of seven people and one of them a woman would keep the check on the regular activities
of the park. They decided to give a discount on the tickets, and the idea ran beyond hopes as the
people who got discounts on the ticket spent more time in the park with their kids. They were all
rewarded for this initiative to work better in the future (Bradt, 2015).
Gazelle Companies
A gazelle company is a company with a higher growth rate and has been incrementing its returns
by at least 25% yearly for four years or more with a returns base of at least $110,000 (McMullen,
& Bergman Jr, 2017). This signifies that the business for four years has more than doubled its
returns.
Their key characteristics
The essential characteristics of gazelle companies care as follows:
 Swiftness – The gazelle companies are fast-growing companies with higher growth rate.
Most of the big companies in the current market are gazelle based companies.
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 Alertness – This type of companies creates substantial job prospects for the employers.
They are always aware of the current conditions of the market.
 Flexible – The gazelles are flexible in their way of working and could change the track of
any company.
The significance of the Gazelle Company to national and regional development
The aim of most of the gazelle companies is to start a new product or facility to meet t5he needs
of the people. The gazelles generate employment both directly and indirectly as this type of
company needs the facility of cleaning, maintaining for the offices.
These type of companies could not begin without the workers or the necessary money to execute
the company with the aim of achieving the domestic or global market. The company would get it
profits on its own, but a start-up fund is important.
It is shown in a study that a Gazelle based in France has earned about 700,000 euro an about 12
employees and gazelle based in London has earned double its capital and double its numbers of
workers.
Examples of Gazelle Company
Twitter and Facebook are examples of gazelle companies' those who have increased the base of
their customers rapidly. But it took them a long time to increase the growth of their customer
base into remarkable sales and revenues (Market Business News, 2018)
The role of innovation champions in fostering innovation within organizations
Innovation champions are those people whose job is to endorse, inspire, support and motivate
new ideas in their companies. This job is done by them with their impulsive vision in an
innovative way. The role of innovation champions is to act as a medium between the planned
resolutions of the high-ranked executive and the regular attention of the staffs.
Their key characteristics
The main characteristics of an innovation champion are as follows:
 Good Impact - A good innovation champions are those people who are admired by their
colleagues and leave behind a positive impact on oneself.
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 Well, Connections - A person who has strong connections with other people could
become a good innovative champion.
 Broad-minded - An innovative champion have to be liberal-minded person those who
are always exposed for thoughtful and innovative plans.
 Positive Planner - Innovation champion has to strictly obsessive for creating new and
optimistic ideas within their companies.
 Open Communicator – An innovative champion have to create prospects for free
interaction and boost self-confidence among the employees.
Importance of Innovation Champions in Organizations
The champions are essential for any company to help the growth and development of that
business. They are always ready to take the risk to execute their plans and make it successful and
are also capable of imparting this quality into their groups.
They have the vision to observe the future of the market and find out the certain requirements to
face the opposition in the market. They have exclusive ideas and plans, and they are firmly
dedicated to it in spite of facing many hurdles from other officials.
Illustration of Innovation Champions with examples
Big companies always feel the burden of updating different products and facilities in order to
stay in the race of the market and to understand the changing power of buying and manners of an
unstable client. In order to cope up with this changes, many companies are hiring people for the
post of innovation champions. Their job is to invent new ideas continuously to keep the
companies updated on the current situation of the market.
For example, Vodafone is one of the big international telephones company that has changed its
conventional invention procedures by starting its Innovation Program in the year 2011. The basis
of this agenda is the Innovation Champions which includes about 50 staffs of Vodafone from
about 25 nations and several other different departments. Their only objective other than their
full-time jobs for which the Vodafone had appointed them is to communicate personally with the
customers of the Vodafone and to create new ideas and plans with them (Jefferson & Spann,
2016).
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References
Bradt, G. (2015). Disney's Best Ever Example Of Motivating Employees. Retrieved from
https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2015/05/20/disneys-best-ever-example-of-
motivating-employees/#58521d55144b
Cooper, A., & Folta, T. (2017). Entrepreneurship and high‐technology clusters. The Blackwell
handbook of entrepreneurship, 348-367.
Dees, J. G. (2017). 1 The Meaning of Social Entrepreneurship. In Case Studies in Social
Entrepreneurship and Sustainability (pp. 34-42). Routledge.
Farhangmehr, M., Gonçalves, P., & Sarmento, M. (2016). Predicting entrepreneurial motivation
among university students: The role of entrepreneurship education. Education+
Training, 58(7/8), 861-881.
Goldman, M. (2018). Gazelle Company. Retrieved from
https://marketbusinessnews.com/financial-glossary/gazelle-company/
Hitt, M., & Duane Ireland, R. (2017). The intersection of entrepreneurship and strategic
management research. The Blackwell handbook of entrepreneurship, 45-63.
Illumine, C. (2013). 3 Examples of Innovation in the Workplace. Retrieved from
https://www.illumine.co.uk/2013/05/examples-of-innovation-in-the-workplace/
Jefferson, S., & Spann, J. (2016). Deep dive: How the innovation champions program works at
telecom giant Vodafone. Retrieved from https://www.innovationleader.com/vodafone-
innovation-champions/
Kazanjian, R. K., Drazin, R., & Glynn, M. A. (2017). Implementing strategies for corporate
entrepreneurship: A knowledge‐based perspective. Strategic Entrepreneurship: Creating
a new mindset, 173-199.
McMullen, J. S., & Bergman Jr, B. J. (2017). Social entrepreneurship and the development
paradox of prosocial motivation: A cautionary tale. Strategic Entrepreneurship
Journal, 11(3), 243-270.
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Turner, T., & Pennington, W. W. (2015). Organizational networks and the process of corporate
entrepreneurship: how the motivation, opportunity, and ability to act affect firm
knowledge, learning, and innovation. Small Business Economics, 45(2), 447-463.
Wilson, M. (2018). 5 Entrepreneurial Lessons from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Retrieved
from http://under30ceo.com/5-entrepreneurial-lessons-from-facebook-ceo-mark-
zuckerberg/
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