"If managed effectively, a corporate venture has the resources of a large organisation and the entrepreneurial Benefits of a small one"
The aim of this assignment is to investigate the role of corporate venturing within the context of an international business. You are to choose an ‘intrapreneurial' organisation and prepare an individual report which identifies a corporate venture invention within your chosen organisation.
Whilst considering the above statement, characterise the development of the entrepreneur's corporate venture and discuss why it was necessary to separate the corporate venturing efforts from the larger traditional organisation. Was it successful? Why? Why not?
Using theories, concepts and models from this subject, explore the factors of risk, uncertainty, newness, obstacles and significance of the new corporate venture. Also, you are to select three case studies from your prescribed text book, Pech, R., (2009), Entrepreneurial courage, audacity, and genius and use those to support your discussion in a proficient and concise manner.
Now that you have mastered and linked the organisation's actions to appropriate explanatory theories and concepts, and competently analysed the development of corporate venturing in practice, provide your recommendation of an alternative strategy in creating successful corporate venturing for the firm to reach it's desired competitive goal.
This is a research paper, and you will note that you will be pressed to compile a comprehensive and concise report of this nature in 1,500 words. You are expected to apply various theories and concepts, therefore it is imperative that you make good use of your research material, and discuss your points efficiently and succinctly. Please do not describe the above case studies, but use those as a point of reference to reinforce your statements.
TASK - 1
The following should roughly be the structure of a report. Note that these are just guidelines, not rules. You have to use your intelligence in working out the details of your specific writing.
1. Cover page
This should detail your personal and subject details, including the word count. Please ensure your student number is on here and your last name is in CAPITAL LETTERS.
2. Table of contents
This should list all the headings in your report along with the page number each section starts at.
3. Introduction
This tells your reader what you're going to tell them in the body of your report (it is not the background of the organisation). Your introduction gives the background to the report; why it is useful; what other objectives are; the purpose of the report; the limitations of the report.
Eg. The aim of this report is to investigate the role of corporate venturing within (list the international organisation). The following report identifies the reason it was necessary to separate the venture, and why its was successful/failed. The report has been compared to the following three case studies found in the subject text... Taking into account this comparison, a recommendation has been made for an alternative strategy to achieve the company's goal for successful corporate venturing in the future.
Points to consider for the introduction:
- What is your topic and reason for choosing this topic?
- What exactly is the problem you are trying to solve? This is the problem statement.
- Why is the problem important to solve? This is the motivation. In some cases, it may be implicit in the background, or the problem statement itself.
- Is the problem still unsolved? This constitutes the statement of past/related work crisply. (Did your group solve the problem, why or why not? This can be answered here or later in the report depending on the structure you adopt).
- Justify why is the problem difficult to solve?
- Your approach. This is of course expanded upon and justified later, but it must be stated explicitly here.
- What are the conditions under which your solution is applicable? This is a statement of assumptions.
4. Organisation background (1 page maximum)
Explain the dilemma/problem facing the organisation/large organisations (link in theory)
5. The corporate venture
In this section you may choose to cover:
- The need
- Venture success/failure, and the reasons why
- Management of the corporate venture (compare to theory and case studies)
- Obstacles and risks (link to theory and case studies)
Points you might consider in this section:
- Justify what aspects you are trying to evaluate? That is, why are the answers to your questions important?
- Why are you trying to evaluate the above aspects?
- Why did you compare cases? (if you did)
- What are the performance metrics? Why?
- What are the limits? Why were these present? (was it because of something the group did)
- Finally, why do the results look the way they do?
6. Conclusion and recommendations
Conclusion
This is where you give an overview of the material presented in the discussion and an interpretation of the relevant facts and events
Recommendations
These are drawn from your conclusions. Your recommendations outline the specific actions that are required. When detailing your recommendations you may also need to consider who will action them; how they will be measured; and the timeframe for the recommendations. The priority that you place on each recommendation may also be required.
7. Reference list
APA style - Alphabetical order and formatted with second/third lines indented. Please see the library resource for examples and rules for this style.