Contractors planning to become ‘contractrepreneurs’ and grow their own contracting business, or to help support entrepreneurialism within their client’s organisation, can learn ten powerful lessons from successful entrepreneurs. That’s according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), responding to its latest research.
Entrepreneurial spirit driving growth is the first of a series of three research reports by CIPD about entrepreneurs and what can be learnt from them. CIPD research adviser and author of the first report Claire McCartney believes that successful organisations can retain their entrepreneurial spirit as they grow, and it’s clear that contractors can have a key role to play.
PCG sponsored research by Cranfield University has come to a similar conclusion, showing that hiring contractors can drive innovation and efficiency within large organisations.
“As start-up companies grow, it can be easy for the entrepreneurial spirit that made it so successful in the first place to wane,” explains McCartney, “but the companies we’ve spoken to have proven that even the largest organisations can retain an innovative edge.” The key, she says, is for them to “pay close attention to attracting, retaining, engaging and developing the right talent”; and that, of course, includes contractors.
CIPD’s ten tenets of entrepreneurial practice for contractors to apply within their own, or their clients’ businesses, include: ‘agility through clever use of expertise’, such as hiring contractors; providing ‘headspace for innovation’ by supporting entrepreneurial contractors and people within the business; and embracing failure as an inevitable and essential part of the creative and innovative process.
CIPD’s ten tenets of entrepreneurial practice “highlight the essence or key tenets of what makes entrepreneurial organisations flourish”. They are:
- Purposeful profit: it’s OK to care
- One part entrepreneurial = twenty parts reach and impact
- The best hold on to their intimacy and togetherness
- Fiercely protect the integrity of the brand
- Agility through the clever use of expertise
- Deep and deliberate co-creation with customers
- Employees as individuals
- Sense of stretch and fun
- Headspace for innovation
- Go forward with failure.
The report also identifies entrepreneurial skills-sets, and according to CIPD, great entrepreneurs:
- Are determined and passionate
- Are continually alert to new opportunities
- Look for purposeful profit
- Take calculated risks
- Play to people’s strengths
- Protect innovation
- Are proud of failure
- Out-think their size.
Managers within contractor client organisations are advised to “find ways of supporting grass-root innovations – bottom-up” by getting “entrepreneurial people in front of the right decision makers and ensuring that employees and contractors connect and share success with each other. “Innovation breeds innovation,” highlights the report.
This is the first report in CIPD’s Entrepreneurs: What can we learn from them? series. Subsequent reports will explore female entrepreneurs and youth enterprise.