Scrupulously walking through Corporate Entrepreneurship
Entropy- neur, a unique platform by ASES India and GirlUp DTU which allows budding entrepreneurs to bloom to their fullest by connecting them with people who have experience and are deep rooted in the field of entrepreneurship.
With its second session taking place we were venerated to have Gennie Neo, who is the Venturing and Incubation Lead at Rolls Royce, to express her views on Corporate Entrepreneurship. Starting her journey in London after completing her graduate program from UCL, London; where she had joined the illustrious company Rolls Royce. Rolls Royce not just being a car company but also has its presence in the following sectors:
1. Aerospace Business sector which deals with manufacturing aircraft engines
2. Defense Business sector which takes into accounts jets, submarines, etc. and its equipments
3. Power Set Business sector which includes engines which have mobile application whether it be the agricultural or industrial machines.
The agenda of Rolls Royce in the field of sustainability is moving towards Electrification. Another sector of the company that looks into the sustainability aspect is the R2 Data Labs. R2 Data Labs performs the following:
1. Data Engineering focuses to verify and organize large volume of data
2. Industrial AI and Advance Analytics which uncovers the best insights from data
3. User Experience and Implementation Expertise where these insights are presented to the customers.
R2 Data Labs works on two principles i.e. Agile working and DevOps. The Data Innovation Ecosystem Hubs mainly comprising in the area of AI and Advance Analytics, Block chain and Quantum, Autonomous and Sensing and Industrial IoT.
CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP –
Mainly entrepreneurship comprises of the four: Startups, Founder, Revenue and New Business. The concept of building something new also exists within big corporates which are usually aided with an additional factor of experience. “151 of the Fortune 500 from 2010 are no longer listed” — this a powerful message which illustrates that large corporates can’t exist if no cultural or related changes are made with the corresponding changing market. Thus corporates develop an innovation arm. Corporate Entrepreneurship encourages its members to take risk, embrace the change which may come as a digital experiment, which is the new normal — to take small risks and analysis the values that have been created by the same. Following are the examples to give the concept of Corporate Entrepreneurship a more practical overview:
1. Rolls Royce Data Innovation Challenge — Asia : This event was focused on the audience that mainly comprised of the Singapore Government and the customers. This is a platform where the challenges faced by the teams working in this industry are discussed, like the capabilities of AI in forecasting the reason of delay in air travel. The employees work with startups guiding them as mentors till the final day (or pitch day) to come up with solutions for the challenges.
2. Block Chain Innovation Challenge: A workshop designated to the works of aircraft engines. The participants work towards the given task, the best work is awarded and they are partnered with future projects. This workshop was a huge success not because of its unique idea but the prodigious responses it received.
There are many initiatives taken by Rolls Royce, they are:
· Yocova — Recently Launched at the Singapore Air Show, it’s an open and neutral platform where the aviation community comes together to exchange information and ideas, to improve outcomes for the whole industry by solving long standing challenges. Its working is different from the traditional style, small teams come together and exchange ideas and data thus moving towards a Digital Generation.
· Emergent Alliance — It’s a recent initiative that has come up due to the COVID-19 situation. Teams come together and try to understand how digital teams can contribute during this period to generate some insights. Rolls Royce soon released that this can’t be achieved by themselves, therefore they reach out to their networks, which are mainly their strategic partners comprising of technical and academic partners to join them in this movement. This Alliance was worked upon for 2 to 3 months before it sprung up as a separate entity which was held up by alliance members. This is a great example how to contribute in times of crises and rely on our alliances and give a useful output to the society and economy.
· Rolls Royce’s Digital Academy is mainly about understanding internal resources in terms of training materials. Focuses on the conversion of internal resources to be used by the public to upscale their digital skills. This is a good example of how the employees are embracing the idea of being digital and how to cope with COVID -19.
v The three pillars which corporates need to embrace are:
1. Co-creating and Co-innovating with partners
2. Develop corporate entrepreneurship
3. Design Scalable system for growth
v How to embrace Corporate Entrepreneurship:
1. Be prepared for the headwinds
2. Take risk, calculated ones
3. Seeing through the mist
4. Be part of the wider team
Q &A Session:
Q: Do you believe that technology driven startups have a brighter future that other startups? If so, why? -Arnav Garg
A: Well. The success of any business depends on what the value proposition the company brings. Technology driven startups are popular at present which suggests that there is a trend of the people moving towards the digitization process, embracing Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and other digital technologies. But we must not forget the other startups that provide other valued propositions that meets the needs of their customers, because the important factors that startups depend upon the customer they serve, the market they want to serve and the customer requirements. If a technology driven startup cannot translate to something the customer can us, the business is not sustainable.
Q: A lot of corporate organizations have invested in developing incubation centers/startup accelerators. If you were to be a founder of an early stage start-up, what would you choose? Join a corporate incubator or explore the open world by going with the traditional Venture Capitalists for investments? And why? -Shivam Bhateja
A: In the case of corporate incubators, the corporates tries to figure out which early stage startup it can work with in a long run, but this a tricky process. There is a possibility that additional helps is received by the corporates in terms of being early or potential customers of the early stage startup so that they are prepared to be in the long road with the corporate, which is usually tricky because the startup lack in the resources and experience to grow their propositions. Also corporates are like dinosaurs which may slow down the early stage startups.
Q: What according to you drives innovation in entrepreneurs? What is the best advice you would want to give to budding entrepreneurs? — Vedant Sharma
A: Innovation and Entrepreneurship isn’t easy journey as it tests the person’s resilience. Though innovation depends upon the person, it can also be attained by the mindset and exploring the arenas of what benefits can we have, how we can solve problems. Through innovation we can attain the right step which would generate revenue for the startup and then they must make their business sustainable through long term goals.
The advice given is that when we come out from universities we tend to join or create startups, but we need to remember that requires proper skills which will help us achieve our goal. Jumping towards our target points are good, but we must formulate a way to sustain through skills which may be in the case of strategy, driving a business case, or case of relationship building.
Q: What are your strategies on pitching ideas as being the person responsible for tie- ups with government, startups, venture capitalists, etc. -Manan Gupta
A: First of all, I would introduce myself and my team. Then explain the vison in terms of where the teams feel innovation direction is going. This helps the government or agencies have a better understanding of the vision and make them get a clear view point on how it fits to the larger corporate strategy.
Next would be the elaboration of all the details, like what to achieve, how to achieve and most importantly the additional support from the government or agency which gives them a better idea that what support we would require from them.
Q: If you had a startup, which industry or field would it be in? -Krtin Syal
A: Since I am very passionate about food, I would like to add a digital aspect to the food industry. Food still remains an essential even during this pandemics period. Food in itself brings joy to people.
Q: What are the common skills which are lacked by any startups and what can they learn from corporates? -Shristi Mehrotra
A: Being from a corporate, makes me wonder long term and strategical goals because a lot of what we do really looks on how we serve on a boarder purpose having a boarder vision. Normally entrepreneurs have a very operational nature, so they really need to think into their long term goal, relationships and plan accordingly in order to sustain their business.
Q: As you mentioned the Hybrid Electric Engines and Electrification is a key pillar for sustainability. Are you working towards Electric jet engines as well? — Meetali Choudhary
A: Yes, this is a project Rolls Royce is heavily investing in, and is a part of a joint programme with Airbus to develop hybrid electric jet engines. The general direction to sustainability is through electrification which reduces the use of fossil fuel in the future, moving in the direction of sustainable energy and ultimately reduce carbon footprint. This though still has not achieved its practical ground but it’s definitely a vision which is being developed towards.
PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM GENNIE NEO –
Every opportunity always has the potential to make us learn something new. There is no perfect job for a person or a job most suited for a person, it’s about the learning journey, the idea of learning something new and have a mindset that any task would be interesting since we haven’t done it. We must embrace our paths of journey and learn as we go. Explore our arenas and find what we excite us eventually.
