In my previous article, I discussed the definition of entrepreneurial orientation and shared a short test for measuring it. Now it makes sense to discuss how a business leader can improve that score! I will cover communication, HR and strategy, but this is not an exhaustive list.

Communicate entrepreneurial behaviour through company values

A statement of company values is a good first step. Here was Bigarade’s statement of values:

(Note 2026-09-02: The values reproduced below are Bigarade’s values from 2018.)

Authenticity: We are authentic with our customers, suppliers and employees. We take responsibility for our mistakes and learn from them so we can be better in the future.

Proactiveness: We are the result of all our past actions. We are responsible for taking action today to ensure that our future present is the one we want.

Innovation: We do not believe everything was discovered and tried in the past. We are not Google-fu ninjas, but masters of creative problem-solving.

Leadership: We are pioneers in the eco-friendly bedding market. We create trends. Competitors follow them.

Acceptance of change: We are not afraid of change, whether it affects our methods, tools, partners or environment. The only certainty in human life is that everything changes constantly, and that the pace of change is accelerating.

Try fast, fail fast: We know how to carry out innovative projects, and we always give them our best effort. We also know when to abandon a project, and we do so without regret.

Environmental and social responsibility: We make a collective and individual effort to reduce our environmental footprint and be a good corporate citizen.

Company values should be concise, easy to understand and applicable to many operational, tactical and strategic situations. Including entrepreneurial values among a company’s values is a good way to encourage entrepreneurial behaviour, provided those values are communicated well and employees have the power to act on them. This brings me to employee empowerment.

Employee empowerment

Empowerment has two main dimensions: the company structures that support it and employees’ actual psychological sense of empowerment. Supporting structures might include participation in company decisions, information sharing across hierarchical levels, opportunities to attend training or any other arrangement that helps employees feel empowered. That feeling has four dimensions:

  • Meaning: the compatibility between the employee’s values and the company’s
  • Competence: the employee’s confidence in their abilities at work
  • Self-determination: the control the employee has over their tasks
  • Impact: the employee’s sense that they have an impact on the organization

Why discuss these concepts? Because the studies cited below associate empowerment-supporting structures with employees’ sense of empowerment1, and associate that feeling in turn with greater innovation within the company.2 I previously identified innovation as a key part of a company’s entrepreneurial orientation. Create structures that let employees feel in control and they will be more innovative, which can contribute to your company’s entrepreneurial orientation and, in turn, its growth! Forget top-down, Taylor-style control. Let employees shine, and resist the urge to micromanage them.

Fail Fast, Fail Cheap

Remember that EO has three dimensions: risk-taking, proactiveness and innovativeness. It is fairly obvious that an innovative, risky project has a chance of failing. You need to be ready for that possibility. It also has a chance of being a major success. There are two ways to decide whether to undertake such a project. The first is to analyze its potential and risk in depth, which can consume many resources and may even exceed the company’s analytical capabilities. The other is to put the resources you would have spent on that analysis into another innovative project. Every decision has an opportunity cost. If you spend too much time deciding whether to do something, you accomplish nothing in the meantime. Over a year, if the projects have comparable costs, limited risks and allow you to learn from one attempt to the next, it is better to complete 12 projects with a 20% success rate than two with an 80% success rate! Of course, I am talking about projects that would not threaten the company’s survival if they failed, hence the word cheap in the title. Major projects, such as relocations, geographic expansions or a large engagement with a consulting firm, deserve more time to maximize their chances of success. Hiring decisions are among the most important decisions a company makes, and they deserve the necessary time and energy.3 In the next section, I offer my opinion on the kind of employee to hire if you want to increase your EO.

Employee selection

Let us assume that you want to increase your company’s EO. If you have made it this far, that must be the case! Consider this scenario. You need to hire a manager to lead a marketing department that performs well but is not especially innovative. Its employees are competent in their respective fields and use techniques known to work, but do not try to push beyond them. Whom should you hire?

  • A manager with 20 years of experience at a single large multinational in your industry.
  • A manager with 10 years of experience across several companies of different sizes and industries, but none in your industry.

My opinion4 is that, all else being equal, you should probably choose the second candidate. I have two main reasons: the availability bias and the learning curve. I discuss availability bias on the page where I explain why I created this blog. It is my pet peeve. In short, it is the tendency to make a decision based on the information most readily available rather than the most relevant information. All else being equal, a manager with 20 years of experience in one industry may be too certain of their methods and procedures and apply them without considering whether they could be improved. Those methods may also have become set and difficult to change if the need arises. A manager with less total experience spread across several industries, by contrast, has probably had to revisit their methods and procedures in each one. They may be more inclined to seek the most relevant information because every move between industries forced them to do so. Their varied experience may also encourage the transfer of skills from one industry to another. Finally, this more junior manager will have spent those 10 years on a steeper learning curve because of the more frequent industry changes. That may have made them accustomed to learning quickly, although it does not allow us to conclude that they know more than the person with greater experience.

Conclusion

In the study discussed in the previous article, higher EO is associated with better growth prospects. There are other internal and external factors I have not discussed, such as attitudes, resources and the environment, because this post is already far too long. I will discuss them in a later post, or posts. Since the study associates EO with growth, I have presented several ways to increase it, but this is not at all an exhaustive list. Why not try something new? Try fast, fail fast!

Footnotes

  1. Knight-Turvey, N. (2006). Influencing employee innovation through structural empowerment initiatives: The need to feel empowered. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 313-324. ↩

  2. Çakar, N. D., & Ertürk, A. (2010). Comparing innovation capability of small and medium‐sized enterprises: examining the effects of organizational culture and empowerment. Journal of Small Business Management, 48(3), 325-359. ↩

  3. This idea comes from Peter Drucker: choosing employees is one of a manager’s most important tasks, and most managers do not devote enough time and resources to it. ↩

  4. Most claims in this blog are supported by reliable sources. When I specify that something is my opinion, I mean that it is an informed conclusion based on my own thinking, but that, to my knowledge, no existing data supports it. ↩