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benefits for the organisation, compared to those who have only limited OIC? Wang and colleagues (2013) investigated the relationship between OIC and individual innovative performance, as perceived by their supervisors. They found a positive, significant relationship between the two. This makes a relationship between OIC and performance likely. In future research, individual and team OI could be linked to relevant performance outcomes. These outcomes could be broader than innovation, and could relate to (profitable) new value-creation for the organisation. The measurement used in Chapter 4 could be extended not only by asking participants what kind of ideas were adopted by management (see page 118), but also by asking management how many of the ideas were eventually implemented.

6.6 Reflections on the practical implications of the results

In this section, the practical implications of the results of the current thesis are discussed on three levels: SME, higher education, and policy. In addition, insight is presented regarding what is currently happening on the policy and higher education level. Some of the recommendations related to the SME level have been formulated in the context of the LLLight’in’Europe research project, and can be found on its website (see www.lllightineurope.com/reports/). The practical implications are mainly relevant for and geared to the situation in the Netherlands.

Before proceeding to the implications, it must be stressed that it is not the intention here to give a complete overview of what is happening in the field, nor to offer a complete set of recommendations. Instead, the main goal of this section is to open up the discussion on the meaning of entrepreneurship, and specifically of OI in practice, and to provide guidelines and ideas for how entrepreneurship could be further implemented as a valuable human capital asset for society.

6.6.1 Small and medium-sized enterprises

Not every business involved in this research can, strictly speaking, be considered an SME in terms of size (i.e., 2 of the 12 businesses had more than 249 employees). Yet, as argued in Chapter 4, all participating businesses faced similar challenges which are considered characteristic for SMEs. Therefore, the practical implications of the current dissertation are considered mainly relevant for SMEs and the recommendations formulated in this section are geared towards SMEs.

As discussed in the section “Developing OIC”, evidence suggests that identifying opportunities is something employees can learn. An important question from the SME perspective is then: how can employees learn to act entrepreneurial, and, more

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specifically, learn to develop their OIC? And what can employers do to facilitate such learning processes?

People with various competencies are needed from the start of the entrepreneurial process The results suggest that employees with differing competencies are needed in the OIC domain: both employees who are able to generate business ideas and employees who are able to evaluate which ideas have potential and therefore deserve further exploration.

In order to recruit and retain the right people, SMEs could look for persons with diverse abilities during selection processes. During job interviews, job applicants could be asked to provide examples of opportunities identified in the past, and of their role in the entrepreneurial process. More specifically, questions that can be helpful are related to past experiences with, and their role in, activities such as product improvement, new business development, optimisation of processes, and acquiring new knowledge. In addition, job applicants could be asked how they prefer to do their work, in order to ascertain whether applicants look for interactions with others, aim to learn from their colleagues, and are open to networking activities within and outside the organisation.

These kinds of questions can help to discover whether people tend to brainstorm and think freely or whether they tend to lend structure and direction to the entrepreneurial process. Furthermore, although employers might consider them more relevant for a specific group of employees, such as managers and R&D professionals, such questions can be asked of job applicants for a wide range of jobs and roles (see in the section 6.4.2,

“Who needs OIC?”).

For long-time employees, activities could be organised to discover what role employees fulfil in the entrepreneurial process. As a side-effect, such activities could contribute to realising new product development, and the further development of existing products, services, and processes. For instance, employees working for various departments (e.g., in finance, R&D, management, HR, marketing, or on the shop floor) could be invited to work together on the exploration of business ideas by using the BMC (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010; see page 114 of this thesis). Job rotation could contribute to creating a more flexible workforce, and could be used as a way for employees to gain insight into what their colleagues do. Stimulating collaboration within departments and across colleagues fulfilling similar jobs may help employees to see alternatives for how to perform their jobs.

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Engage employees in entrepreneurial activities, have confidence in their ability to act entrepreneurial, and create a work environment that fosters identification of opportunities The results of the current dissertation suggest that employees who actively engage in entrepreneurial activities have better OIC. Accordingly, actively involving employees in tasks such as product and service development, and stimulating them to improve work practices, to acquire new knowledge as well as new groups of customers, can contribute to their performance in the entrepreneurial process. It is helpful if employees experience the freedom to engage in such activities and to share their ideas with others.

The results further suggest that employees who have confidence in their own creativity and ability to conceive new business ideas are more likely to identify opportunities. Consequently, supervisors could communicate faith in employees’

ability to cross boundaries and think of new ideas. As some employees might not feel comfortable generating ideas and sharing them, employers could select early adapters who are willing to act as idea generators and evaluators. These employees could actively look for opportunities and discuss them with their colleagues, so that these colleagues get involved in entrepreneurial processes without necessarily having to take initiative themselves.

Direct evidence was not found for the role of the work environment in OIC.

Nevertheless, the results suggest that the work environment can foster entrepreneurial behaviour. In additional analyses (which were conducted for LLLight’in’Europe) it was found that those employees who got three or more ideas accepted by management in the previous three years more often faced complex problems in their daily work that take at least 30 minutes to find a good solution – in contrast to the group that introduced fewer ideas. Furthermore, a relationship was found between the acceptance of ideas and the specificity of instructions employees received regarding the process of performing daily tasks. If employees got six ideas or more accepted by management, they had received only general instructions or had had the freedom to decide how they would prefer to perform their tasks. These findings are discussed in the policy report written for the European Union (EU; see Lans, Biemans, & Baggen, 2015). Together, these results suggest that employee performance in the entrepreneurial process can be positively influenced by the complexity of their work and the freedom they have in how they do their job.

Foster teamwork from the very start of the entrepreneurial process

From a conceptual point of view as well as from empirical evidence, the importance of involving teams in the entrepreneurial process is evident. Teams are not only valuable

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in the context of entrepreneurship, but can also help in becoming a flexible organisation (Decuyper et al., 2010). In the current dissertation, mixed teams participated in the assessment, including employees from the shop floor on up to the management team.

Depending on the business context and organisational goals, employers can consider who they would prefer to commit to the entrepreneurial process. The results of this thesis underline the importance of involving teams from the very start of the entrepreneurial process, namely in identifying potential business opportunities.

Because of the different competencies that are involved in OI, teams could include employees who are able to generate ideas and employees who are able to evaluate which ideas have the most potential and deserve further investigation.

There is no “one –size-fits-all” approach

Finally, it is important to realise that HR practices should be organised in a way suitable to the organisation. There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach. Each organisation is different, and has different needs. How to structure activities depends on the nature of the organisation. For instance, it depends on the educational level and background of the employees, the organisational culture, the structure, the size of the organisation, and so on. Accordingly, HR professionals should carefully consider what kind of activities suit the organisation. Because of the complexity and the importance of HR, it is recommended that at least one person in the organisation have the time and resources to organise learning activities and to support employees’ professional development. Because at many SMEs the resources for building up a solid HR system are not at hand, external agencies could play a supporting role here; this will be discussed in the section “6.6.3 Policy”. More suggestions for activities can be found on the website of LLLight’in’Europe (see www.lllightineurope.com/simulation-tools/).

Regardless of size, the intention can be similar: an intention to support employees in their learning processes, their professional development, and their willingness and eagerness to act entrepreneurial and identify opportunities.

In Chapter 1, Schut Papier was introduced as an illustrative case of an SME where the importance of entrepreneurship is acknowledged. Because it appears that, at this firm, many of the recommendations as discussed in the practical implications were applied, Schut Papier is again presented here, as a case illustrative (6.1) of how entrepreneurship can be organised within an SME.

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Illustrative case 6.1 Schut Papier

According to the director, the following factors contribute to the entrepreneurialism of Schut Papier:

For opportunity identification:

 Actively investing in social networks:

 Actively searching for opportunities (via others and via the internet).

 Flexibility: three employees (including the director) are in charge of daily work, and the hierarchy is rather flat.

As a result, the employees work as one big team and the organisation is flexible.

 Personal contact: every day, a short meeting is held to evaluate the previous 24 hours and to look ahead to the coming day. The director visits the paper mill daily and talks to the employees to ask how they are, find out how things are going, and hear their opinion on relevant topics.

 Room for experimenting: in one example, a new employee had to learn how to colour paper, which an experienced employee can do within half an hour. Even though a new employee takes four hours to create the right colour, the employee was given the opportunity to learn and experiment.

 Autonomy: employees are encouraged to act responsibly and autonomously. Because the paper mill is growing, two new employees have been assigned to fulfil a supervisory role over the employees working on the shop floor. The new employees will train their colleagues and help them deal with new situations so that their independence will increase.

 Employee selection: when selecting new employees, the learning attitude of the applicant is at least as important as the knowledge he or she has. Learning attitude is defined as “interactive, pro-active, searching for solutions, and passionate”.