The Knowledge Entrepreneurship Model
Following Clark, (1998, 2004) “entrepreneurial” can be used as a characteristic not only applied to individuals, but to organizations as social systems, as well as to projects. However, in contrast to Clark, the dynamic process of vision, and change aspects of entrepreneurship (Kuratko, 2006; Schumpeter & Opie, 1934), also known as entrepreneuring are stressed. Thus entrepreneurship is the act of pursuing new ways of doing thing in a real context, or more concretely “the essential act of entrepreneurship is new entry” (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Or as Brown put it: “Entrepreneurship is a process of exploiting opportunities that exist in the environment or that are created through innovation in an attempt to create value” (Brown & Ulijn, 2004, p. 5)
This forward looking notion is nicely depicted by Kanter (1983). According to her, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organizations “always operate at the edge of their competence, focusing more of the resources and attention on what they do not yet know (e.g. investment on R&D) than controlling what they already know. They measure themselves not by the standards of the past (how far they have come) but by visions of the future (how far they have yet to go). And they do not allow the past to serve as a restraint on the future; the mere fact that something has not worked in the past does not mean that it cannot be made to work in the future. And the mere fact that something has worked in the past does not mean that it should remain.” (Kanter as in (Cornwall & Perlman, 1990, pp. 27–28).
Using McDonald (2002, pp. 12–33), the following specific set of attractors have been proposed by Senges (2007) to directly influence the knowledge entrepreneurship ability (figure 1.6): Environmental awareness describes with what practices and with what intensity the organization gathers information about its external and internal environment. The importance of this practice for the establishment of an entrepreneurial organization was also recognized by Cornwall and Perlman (1990). They write: “Scanning should be a fundamental part of every manager’s job, not something that is done by top management in conjunction with the annual update of the strategic plan“(ibid p. 46). As such the concept includes activities like internal needs analysis, benchmarking and inter-organizational networking. The organizations attitude towards the risk inherent in the pursuit of all innovation is captured under the concept of risk tolerance. A factor which has not been part of McDonald’s model (and which replaces the variable named analytical diligence ) covers the organizations vision in the sense of entrepreneuring (Kuratko, 2006). This ability is strongly related to strategic thinking and planning, describes its culture of envisioning and scouting new developments. New project support refers to the degree to which new initiatives are institutionalized as a means of institutional development. Thereby the monetary means, as well as managerial attention given to experimental projects is looked at. Communication is the last variable taken into consideration as a major influence for knowledge entrepreneurship. The organizational style of communication and the richness of communication channels are evaluated here.
Furthermore the organizational condition, described through its setting and its current leadership and its organizational culture are set to determine the general possibilities for knowledge entrepreneurship to occur. Thereby the organizational setting represents the basic factual being of the organization; its size, type of institution, business model, history and historic approach to innovation. Under leadership the style and values embraced by the current top decision makers, as well as the governance structure itself is evaluated. The concept of organizational culture is central to the understanding of the enabling or discouraging condition of the organization, as it adapts its attitude towards organizational learning and whether values like innovativeness, competitiveness, entrepreneurship etc. are embraced or rejected.
On the output side, knowledge entrepreneurship is set to improve innovativeness and thereby indirectly improve performance. But “the most important outcome of organisational entrepreneurship is long term: an organisation that is better able to adapt and survive.” (Cornwall & Perlman, 1990, p. 29)
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