BSS057-6: Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Case Study Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of corporate innovation and entrepreneurship, focusing on the Webasto AG case study. It delves into the company's strategies for navigating challenges in the automotive supply industry around 2000, including its adoption of open innovation and diversification efforts. The report explores the interplay between creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship, examining how Webasto leveraged leadership, managerial strategies, and organizational changes to achieve success. It applies various theoretical frameworks, such as Lewin's three-step model, Senge's organizational learning, and Basadur's thinking organization, to evaluate the company's approach to innovation and change management. The report also examines Webasto's emphasis on building a strong company culture, fostering employee creativity, and adapting to market dynamics. Ultimately, the report highlights the importance of continuous innovation and open collaboration in achieving sustainable business growth and competitive advantage.

Running Head: CORPORATE INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author Notes

2Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Abstract
The report aims at analyzing the entrepreneurship structure and the importance of the
innovation of the business in its respect. The report revolves around the issues as it has been
seen in the case study of Webasto. Among the theories, that has been used Lewin’s three step
models, Senge’s notion of organizational learning, Basadur’s thinking organization and
several other theories. The concern of the report is to evaluate the link between creativity,
innovation and entrepreneurship through the lens of leadership, managerial strategies and
incorporated changes.

3Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................4
Creativity....................................................................................................................................4
Innovation..................................................................................................................................5
Entrepreneurship........................................................................................................................8
Analysis of Organizational system...........................................................................................11
Synthesis Organizational System.............................................................................................14
Recommendation......................................................................................................................16
Conclusion................................................................................................................................16
Reference..................................................................................................................................18

4Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Introduction
The case study in concern focuses upon the company, Webasto AG, which was one of
the leading supplier of automotive supplier. The case study is placed around 2000, which
proved to be a challenging time for the supplies concerned with supplying automotive parts.
Two options available to the organizations in the industry whether to furnish considerable
amount of market power or diversify. However, the company Webasto AG combined both
the available strategy by building a competitive market power for themselves and by
diversifying their service and product to cater to the end customer market. Its primary
endeavor is to capitalize on the manufacturer of the product that they supply by joining them
with the value of the product that has been proposed as it has been added to the innovation in
the service as well as in marketing. The proposed innovated product then had been marketed
via a highly networked channel. Another unique point of this supplier channel is imbibe in
the fact that it opened up the process of innovation in order to incorporate the innovation
from the ‘lead users’, referring to the early accepters of the new process. The aim of the
report therefore is to conduct an in depth analysis of the innovation used by the company in
order to bring about changes in the situation of crisis and how the creative aspect of the
innovative strategies and strategies was helpful for the company in diversifying its
entrepreneurship endeavor. The aim of the report is to conduct analysis and synthesis the
organizational creative innovation and use the contemporary theories in order to evaluate the
same (Van Gundy 1981).
Creativity
The company is attributed by its innovative measures since it first stepped its foot in
the innovative business endeavor. It started with the company creating the easily foldable
roof as its first step toward creative innovation. The next endeavor that the company made

5Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
was to create a heating system with fresh air. The history of the company can be excavated to
trace a number of innovations that lined its way. The company has established its brand name
in the global sector with the two innovations mentioned above and thereby establishing 26
plants for controlling production. Along with that there emerged 43 subsidiaries on the global
platform. Founder Baier was of the opinion that in the case of the company the culture plays
the central pivotal role on which the value of the company depends and its changes is
imperative to change the mindset around which the market demand is created (Weisberg
2006). Creativity has been considered a two way process. The first process being the one
where creativity is looked upon as the flow, which consolidates in a unprecedented way after
a certain point. In the words of Woodman and Sawyer creativity in a organization scenario
has been looked upon valuable creation of product or services that would be of use to the
bring a innovative nature among the complexities of the organizational scenario. From the
perspective of the theory, it can be realized that the company about certain changes in the
leadership models as well as in the culture in order to suit the changing demand of the
company. The creative endeavor taken by the company in this respect is that of appointing of
Franz Joseph as the CEO who brought about massive changes in the managerial set up of the
organization. It is always suggested that in the dynamic business environment which is
continuously evolving, it is imperative to understand that creativity and innovation are the
key elements that aid one organization on thriving to the evolving marketing scenario (Ali
Taha, Sirkova, and Ferencova 2016). Though on the ground level it seems easier to involve
creative innovation in the organizational setup, it is difficult in its implementation. Webasto
relied on the leadership of Kortum whose realization about the fact that the advantage of the
organization was invested in its ability to sustain through integrating into the marketing and
supply sector.

6Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Innovation
The innovation for the company has been reinforced by Kortum appointing Lang as
the consultant for the marketing and innovation. Drawbacks of the company is invested in its
inability to formulate a greater understanding of the end market with the limitations invested
in its failure to estimate the growth of the organization. In order to secure its competitive
advantage in the otherwise competitive market to prevent the ideas being sold off to the
marginal competitors present in the market (Anderson, Potocnik and Zhou 2014). From the
perspective of organizational benefits it can be said that innovation has been seen as the
introduction of the ideas that are new to the organizational scenario with full effort. The risk
of the innovations been sold away is high in the earlier stage of development in the OEM. In
this case, the cost leadership came to aid the company to allow it to mark its direct entry into
the competitive market by entering directly into the end market. Its entry into the end market
allowed the company to estimate the trend of the end market, and to intervene into the market
without the risk of running through loss. The newly evolved capability of the company in
estimating its advantages is invested in its ability to analyze the demand of the market and
thereby prevent a huge loss from being disseminated in the process (Dentchev et al., 2016).
One of the important way by which the company made its marks towards the creating
innovative structures for the company is by creating an organizational culture. His idea
behind furnishing company culture was to boost the innovation and the creativity and the
conveying the conditions of age long posters that adorned the walls of the company was
doing it. By conveying the same to the employees. He allowed the employees to choose from
a wide array of pictures and thereby urging them to customize their own calendar. The idea
gained massive popularity after being famous among the employees. The vision of Lang was
to create a creative environment in order to facilitate the creativity among the employees. The
decoration of the room was done in a fashion so that it conjures an inspiring environment.

7Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
A follow up of this endeavor can be noted in the company during its participation in
the Frankfurt motor show, where the company introduced a competition of ideas among the
employees that led to the generation of approximately 180 ideas. The idea that got featured
was to replace the sun visor with an inductive foil which could create its adaptively from the
shading, thereby preventing blindness to be conducted from the exposure to the sunlight.
Innovations should be continuous in order to renew the structure and the functioning
of the organization and re-innovate the models of business, which has been the primary area
of concern for most of the companies. Owing to the complexities of implementation, most
organizations have lost their innovative capability. The innovativeness and its urge to
maintain its continuous development has been a serious source of concern for most of the
corporates. Such continuous innovation was initiated to mitigate the turbulence of the market.
The character of the organization also impacts the extent of the innovation by influencing
them.
In the context of the current globalized business many companies seek to open up their
organizational structure, welcoming open innovation. It emphasizes on outsourcing the
solutions from the exteriority of the organizations in order to mitigate their problems. Thus it
enables the organization concerned to collaborate with corporates using their brand name as
well as with universities and bodies concerned with research. Open innovation allows the
organizations to come out of the age-old misconception and reduces the cost inculcated at
research. Such openness also opens up the business to the perusal of common public, thereby
reducing the loss in the hand of the customers (Loewenberger , Newton and Wick 2014).
However, in the scenario of changes and innovation, challenges are common
occurance. Though from the perspective of the organizational scenario it can be said that the
organizational changes refer to the changes occurred on a massive scale. As such innovation

8Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
is capable of bringing about innovation in the organizational scenario. However, challenges
are also precedent in the application of innovation. In such a scenario, systematic approaches
are the only way to mitigate the challenges.
Fig 1: Open Innovation
Source: Collected by authorrisk risk
Entrepreneurship
Two types of climate prevails as far as the entrepreneurship in an
organization is concerned. The types of climate in concern are psychological and
organizational. Certain key models in order to analyze the innovation in an organizational
environment are that of Keys. Questionnaire for creative environment and the situational

9Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
outlook one. According to Tidd, in an innovative organization, the components that are
essential to innovation are shared vision and the intervention of the capable leadership to
enhance the organization with their perspective (Donate and de Pablo 2015).
Fig2: Creative climate
Source: Created by the author
In order to apply the innovative creative environment within an organization it is important to
formulate the structure of the organization in order to make it suitable to the cause.
Innovation require certain key personals, who take the leads in the implementation of the
innovation. The creative environment should motive the employees. Apart from these factors
of creative innovation in an organizational set up it is important to accumulate the focus of
the internal and the external environment in its orientation to the customers. Along with that
networking creates the channels for the transportation of the innovation.

10Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
There are certain key elements of culture that needs to be considered as
far as the organizational culture is considered. The first factor is that of culture as a shared
phenomenon. As such culture is something not restricted to individuals but spread to other
individuals as well. As far the experience of culture is considered it is noted that there two
different existence of culture, in the first level culture exists as a surface phenomenon which
makes it appear visible and on another level, it is much deeper and visible however expressed
as the ‘value-in-use’. The final aspect of culture is that it is learned or acquired via interaction
with other people in the surrounding. In case of an organization the factors are beliefs, shared
values and behavioral norms those are the key elements imperative for generating innovative
ideas and implementing them. Socialization may be useful for the employees to understand
the acceptability of behaviors. As a result the organization focusing on the creative values
tend to highlight the importance of the innovation and rewards the subject with proper
recognition and at the same time bring about norms that are crucial for implementing the
newly evolved ideas.
Entrepreneurship is the summation of the creative aspects of an organization brought
down in order to make it innovative. Innovation is aimed at furnishing the solutions to the
complex situations in reactions to those the innovation has been generated (Proctor 2013).
Innovation is the key factor behind guiding the economy as it boosts the economy to thrive in
the challenging environment. Innovation is mostly fruitful as well as crucial for the business
scenario where the business scenario has been made consolidated and saturated with the
existing business models, thereby lacking any factor intriguing development and initiation to
thrive in the changing market scenario. As it has been seen in the case of Webasto that the
organization has been taken through a series of strategical changes in order to facilitate the
organic growth of the organization. As a result of fact, any kind of reluctance from the

11Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
motivators of the business is capable of stagnating the business environment
(Theodorakopoulos, Kakabadse, and McGowan 2014). Thus in order to remain effective in the
changing business scenario it is important for the business to subscribe to the dynamic
changes in order to maintain their effectiveness (Amabile and Pratt 2016). The business
model as well as the cost leadership needs to be modified in order to thrive in the competition
that was introduced in the global market because of innovation.
Analysis of Organizational system
The continuous changes in the global business scenario, while disturbing the balance
of the economy, opens up newer opens up the area for the newer business to flourish. In such
it is important to conduct an analysis of the corporate strategies that needs to be incorporated
as it has been done by Webasto. As such, innovative entrepreneurship are becoming crucial
factors behind stabilizing the economy. The startups can be benefitted from the creative
advantages and flourish in the challenging business environment. Such creative opportunities
in the global market is giving rise to a certain class of people backed by the strategic tools of
digital marketing and social media. Webasto too had created a database of its lead user
customers. Thus, the entrepreneurship scenario demands an integration of the strategic
business practice along with the creative innovation (Edwards-Schachter et al., 2015). The
changes need to be planned in order to suit the changes as well as build the competence of
those working to words implementing them. The theories of planned changes like the ones
the Lewin, known as his model of unfreezing, changing and refreezing emphasizes upon
three steps. The transition as the organization has been taken through in order to achieve the
innovation needs to be sequential and rational approach towards creative innovation (Bakari,

12Corporate Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Hunjra and Niazi 2017). It is also impediment for the organization to go through the three
stages in order to effectively incorporate the innovation. The resistance in implementing the
changes come from the lack of proper communication. The suggestion of the Lewin’s
structure of the planned stage is imbibed in the fact that unfreezing demands a need to bring
about the changes as well as reduce the forces of resistance at the times from the competitive
external forces (Cummings, Bridgman and Brown 2016). The step of unfreezing should be
joined by implementing the system of operation that needs to be adopted in order to suit the
changes. This requires the intervention of the leaders and the HRM as the employees need to
learn to create their adaptive competence with the changing environment. Refreezing refers to
the internalization of the innovation (Loewenberger 2013). Thus the three steps of Lewis
model’s focus on the transition from the creativity to innovation to entrepreneurship. There
are certain drawbacks in respect to the changes being internalized and stagnant. It has been
critiqued that the process in never frozen rather it is a continuous one in order to incorporate
the changes (Burns 2011).
Fig3 : Ambidexterity mechanism