Being and Entrepreneurship

“Organizations tend to evolve in ways that are inherently resistant to entrepreneurship. Yet Entrepreneurship is instrumental for ensuring the long-term sustainability of any enterprise.” (Properties of balance: A pendulum effect in corporate entrepreneurship, Michael H. Morris, Jurie van Vuuren, Jeffrey R. Cornwall, Retha Scheepers)

Whether you call it corporate entrepreneurship or individual creativity, it is difficult to drive behavior that challenges the status quo, questions existing procedures, or increases personal risk.

“More fundamentally, fostering corporate entrepreneurship becomes problematic if company executives do not know what they are trying to achieve.” (Morris, et al)

Finding balance in large organizations is difficult at best. The larger the group the further removed any single individual is from the source of cash flow, from the feel of customers, from the pulse of technological change. (You know, the smell of the sawdust, the feel of the earth type stuff.) The meaningfulness of any individual change can then be questioned. The rewards of putting one’s neck on the line more elusive.

Research on risk taking tends to show we are much more willing to seek out risk to avoid a small loss than a get a small gain. (Post on this at Blogging Innovation by Steven Shapiro)

Morris summarizes an architecture of balance for an organization that wants to encourage entrepreneurial creativity. It covers conflicting dimensions that must co-exist along the lines of strategy, culture, structure, control, and HRM. In the end it seems encouraging entrepreneurship can be a lot like the ying and yang of corporate structuring, or the spaces between being and nothingness.

It made me wonder, where the heck is economic recovery going to come from if large organizations find it so difficult to change direction.

Then I became distracted, by pig farming.

Walter at Sugar Mountain Farm has taken on a vertical integration project that flies in the face of some preconceived notions about scale and the general momentum of the ag industry (at least from what little I know about it).

I can’t remember when I started following Walter’s blog. But I’m a regular visitor as he describes life on a family pig farm where they are in the business of “certified naturally grown, humanely raised, pastured pigs raised on pasture, hay, whey and other good foods in the mountains of Vermont.”

On Sunday he announced:

“We are building an on-farm slaughterhouse and butcher shop located on our farm so that we can get our pork to customers’ fork.”

First – Gotta love the motto.

More to the point – Building an on-site nano-slaughterhouse goes against the long term trend of ever increasing scale in the agriculture industry. From reading Walter’s post I also get the impression it could go against the pre-conceived notions of some of his customers and readers as well.

But if you want to get inside the head of an entrepreneurial thinker, read the post.

His expansion has good cash fundamentals. (Ground floor entry for any new idea)

But it also provides leadership in areas as diverse as animal care, bio-security, supply chain management, quality control, and improved product.

And his resourcefulness in executing the plan is a perfect example of cardboard creativity at work. A business ecosystem that includes customers pre-ordering to lock in supply (providing funding), extended payment terms from builders, and his family’s own sweat and tears.

The post is long, but in my mind worth the read. Better than many business plans I’ve read over the years.

In the age amazing success stories like Google, Twitter, Apple, Microsoft, H-P, Intel and other high tech franchises, it’s easy to think that the payoff for being an entrepreneur is vast riches.

And, yes, some do hit the lottery.

But for most, being an entrepreneur is as more about a lifestyle and making a decent living than striking it rich.

Of course, we can dream.

I’ll leave the final word to Walter:

“This, of course, does not include any charge for our labor but this is a farm and farmers don’t get salaries or hourly wages – we get the satisfaction of working outdoors in the beautiful country weather. Preferably before the snow hits the concrete.” (Sugar Mountain Farm Blog)