Our sessions of the course IETECHSTARTUP (Managing the Tech Startup) by Prof Enrique Dans have been going fabulous as part of International MBA at IE Business School. In the next session. we were introduced to Iñaki Arrola, Founder and CEO of Coches.com. He talked on the topic of competing with larger competitions. The used car market at that time was dominated by large competitors, including Coches.net, Autoscout24 and Autocasion. Iñaki started in the new car business with autodescuento.com, and later moved into used car with coches.com. In case of competition, the success will depend on the differentiation in offering. The user experience is the most important factor that drives success. The back-end of the user interface should be equally robust to support front end. Another side note suggestion from the session was to avoid working with friends on startups, as you may potentially lose those friends. Also, it is important to maintain work family balance. It is very much possible, even if you are an entrepreneur.
These learning can be directly applied also in the case of Corporate Entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs trying to drive a new idea within the boundaries of a bigger organisations also face similar challenges. To move into a new market with established competitors is a difficult task. Sometimes it is easier to leverage some attributes of larger company, such as branding and financial stability. While in some other cases, existing attributes may also become a liability if it does not fit well with the new idea. In any case, the entrepreneur within the company also need to understand the importance of differentiation as compared with the existing competition. The entrepreneur should also look into the matter of end-user experience, and the backend support for the same. Working on traditional startup with friends can be compared with colleagues with whom a corporate entrepreneur share good working relations. Involving close colleagues may pose be a risk of getting alienated to those professional relations. Maintaining work and life balance factor is also challenging for a corporate employee driving an idea passionately. after this session, I believe that it is possible for an entrepreneur within large organisation to main happy personal life, while driving the idea withing organisation.
startupinanenterprise 