Welcome to topic number 4, and specifically to this subtopic related to the practical examples of corporate entrepreneurship projects and programs. As we have mentioned in the previous topics, corporate entrepreneurship entails processes that go from strategic planning, the formation of teams of structures so that these projects can be carried out, as well as the development of an entrepreneurial culture. This time we are going to see some real examples of different organizations and companies that are carrying out corporate entrepreneurship projects, and which have turned out to be very successful. You may remember in the first part of the course when we talked about innovation, we referred to organizational innovation, that is, that type of innovation which is an integral part of the strategic DNA of the organizations. One of the examples was LEGO, obviously many will identify LEGO as the toy company that has become famous for its building blocks to construct different things. The core business of LEGO, toys, has traveled through many stages throughout its history and it even was twice on the verge of bankruptcy. The interesting thing about LEGO is that it has had to retrain itself to become precisely a very innovative company, where the entrepreneurship of their employees and their directors has made the difference to create new complementary products or services to their core business. A very interesting example of corporate entrepreneurship in LEGO is that of the educational division “LEGO education” where there are training programs that run from kindergarten to executive education for adults, where by incorporating building blocks, they have managed to do a myriad of interesting things in the area of education a great example of corporate entrepreneurship. Another great example that is inspiring, is the case of the Japanese businessman Konosuke Matushita, who frequently inspired his executives with the phrase: “think as an entrepreneur, not as any other employee”: Matsushita Electric Company was able to create an entrepreneurial environment which developed many innovations and this was transferred to great brands such as the ones we know today, Panasonic. It is precisely corporate leadership that transforms a very traditional organization such as the manufacturing of electronic components into a really revolutionary and innovative company. Another very interesting example is that of the American company Procter & Gamble we all probably are familiar with one of the Procter & Gamble products, as they are in multiple markets with a broad portfolio, specially products of massive consumption. Throughout its history, Procter & Gamble is a centenary company, it also has had to reinvent itself. Here we can see some examples of platforms which have been developed, for instance, Connect and Develop, which is an open innovation platform where the company looks for innovations anywhere in the world in order to solve problems. As its name states, this platform connects innovations of Procter & Gamble employees with external innovations. This makes innovation mechanisms very agile, and thanks to this platform they have been able to make many complementary products and services. We also see a message that is very important about Procter & Gamble, despite being a leading company in many of the sectors in which they compete, they are continually looking for innovation sources which will enable them to develop in an entrepreneurial way, new products, and new Services. And isn’t there corporate entrepreneurship in our region, that is, in Latin America? Of course there are many Interesting cases, sometimes companies do not make these cases visible, but let’s look at some examples.There is a chain of coffee houses in Mexico called “Cielito Querido Café”. The interesting part of this story is that this coffee house is born from a company in a very different area to that of coffee houses: the ADO group, a very traditional passenger transportation group in Mexico. Cielito Querido Café was developed with the intention of training the ADO employees in quality service. This small experiment which was devised by a group of workers inside ADO became one of the highest growth chains in Mexico. Today, Cielito Querido Café was transferred to the Herdez group, which is a great business group in Mexico, being a very interesting spin-off example. Another example in Latin America is Wayra, the corporate accelerator of the Telefónica group from Spain, which is born specifically in Latin America, Argentina and Chile, to connect internal entrepreneurs with external entrepreneurs who were synergetic with the groups and the core ideas of the Telefónica group. Then, this is a great example of corporate entrepreneurship as it precisely enables the combination of both worlds, the internal and external ones. Another very interesting example is that of the Mexican cement plant, CEMEX, which has carried out very interesting projects, precisely from business units of the company, which have also encouraged the innovation of many of the employees. A A very specific example is the case of Construrama, which is a retail chain of construction material, one of the largest ones in Latin America. Construrama is born precisely under the wing of an idea of corporate entrepreneurship, in such a way that the goal was to integrate forward the distribution and sales operations of the CEMEX products but obviously only a few companies can have the capacity to operate 3 thousand points of sale. What they did was to make one-on-one strategic partnerships with small distributors in Mexico to create an impressive commercial infrastructure. Finally, another very interesting example in an industry that one would consider to be hardly subject to entrepreneurship innovation, such as the financial industry, can also give us a great example of corporate entrepreneurship. The Investment and Credit bank, is a Chilean bank, after analyzing certain changes in the financial legislation in Chile, they realized there was an opportunity to create a business unit that could favor entrepreneurs. And one would say, well, the bank and entrepreneurs are usually not very good friends, but well, a very interesting thing that the bank ,BCI, has done is to develop instruments that will enable to give credits to entrepreneurs in Chile, using as collateral guarantees that the Chilean government himself offers to entrepreneurs. Then it is very interesting to see how a bank who even has the corporate image more similar to movie cartoon characters, has achieved to generate a great example of corporate entrepreneurship, and that is how it develops the “Banca Nace” to help entreprenerus. There obviously are many more examples of corporate entrepreneurship projects and programs in many different industries and in many types of organizations. The interesting part is that these examples systematically take place in many large companies. We invite you to check the additional material where we will analyze some of these successful examples more deeply.
