Tuesday, 5 March 2013, 4:10 pmPress Release: Leaders Review
Leaders Review, a collective leadership initiative to encourage the entrepreneurial and executive communities, kicked off its fourth year of TV and online publishing with the producer promising to highlight intrapreneurism or entrepreneurial practice and thinking within the larger, corporate organization.
Leaders Review, a collective leadership initiative to encourage the entrepreneurial and executive communities, kicked off its fourth year of TV and online publishing with the producer promising to highlight intrapreneurism or entrepreneurial practice and thinking within the larger, corporate organization.
“With Leaders Review having profiled the thoughts, fears and focus of many in the entrepreneurialcommunity, the role of the rarer corporate intrapreneur is something I’ve often thought about since profiling Ralph Norris’ for the NBR back in the late ‘Eighties,” said Mr Anich.
At the time, Norris had had a meteoric rise to become CEO of the ASB bank, and put a big part of it down to ignoring the peer pressure behind latest-technology ‘bells and whistles’ that constantly did the rounds of I.T. departments. The key, Norris espoused back then, was to concentrate one’s focus toward drawing the straightest line possible in simplifying the user experience – technology or no technology.
Said Mr Anich, “I took it from Norris’ statement, that often meant heading the opposite way to what was either culturally 'hip' - or otherwise corporate systemic.”
“In the wider context, if you could break from your own corporate system or thinking – albeit intrepidly or not – and for long enough to drawthat straight line, such intrapreneural behaviour could initiate many positive breakthroughs within corporate practice and delivery.
“What makes this highly relevant as we look at the state of our local entrepreneurial and innovation communities today, is the spillover effect such ‘bootleg’ attitudes at corporate leadership and executive level can potentially create for those communities.
“To encourage such a groundswell, Leaders Review has been putting together a small, invited and accepting, “dragons den’ of sorts,” explains Anich. “…Corporate pragmatists whose ideas we hope will galvanize senior and mid-level leaders toward more ‘Norris-like’ straight-line thinking, and one that can link more openly to the wider business community.”
“We have many SME-level innovators only too prepared to offer both government and corporate a range of their own simpler, straight-line solutions but often they remain overlooked. They’re either seen as too career-risky for any upwardly-mobile corporate employee to promote internally, or otherwise they face the old, ‘not invented here’.
“True intrapreneurs tend to go for the best of breed regardless of source.”
“You get the impression that this Kiwi socio-cultural thing plays a bigger role on the success of NZ inc. than even our individual talents for innovation.”
“So while its imperative for our media exercise to embolden entrepreneurs’ chutzpah, a handbrake will remain without a courage of conviction shown by a groundswell of their intrapreneurial peers. Its time we focused more on the big end of town.“
LEADERS REVIEW KEY MOMENTS.
Where seen:
- 6.20AM* LEADERS REVIEW'S REGULAR TVC SLOT, TV ONE Mon-Fri Early-Breakfast. [Times vary slightly given live nature of Breakfast.]- Extended or 'breakout' versions online following the television casts, at LeadersReview.co.nz - This Week’s featured leader: David Stone, CEO, NZ Telecommunications Forum on the role of integrity in negotiations.
ENDS
