Developing Leadership Skills for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Transnational Companies

Purpose and goal

The project objective has been to contribute to an increase of the capability to drive entrepreneurial initiatives and innovation projects in the context of large organizations. To achieve this objective, the project has - interviewed 63 (35+28) senior managers, HR managers and ´high potentials´ of two MNCs in Europe and Asia - studied the internal systems for strategy and leadership development - made 3+3 explorative workshops (tot 68 persons) - developed a quantitative survey which has been used to collect background data for two workshops with in total 25 persons

Results and expected effects

An ambition with the project was to raise questions around the connection between strategy, innovation and the development of leadership capability. One of the organizations has started a large initiative to drive this question on three hierarchical levels. A discussion on the same theme has been started in the second organization. The first organization has given Chalmers the assignment to continue doing explorative workshops with ´high potentials´. Research results have started to form, and academic articles are in production.

Approach and implementation

The project outlay was created together with two Swedish MNCs. We interviewed high potentials (potential to take group management positions or just below in 5-10 years) in Europe and Asia, top management and HR-managers. We asked about development of leadership, its connection to vision/strategy, degrees of freedom for leaders to drive innovation/entrepreneurial initiatives, expectations on them to do this, and the degree of support. Large differences were found. We created workshops with the companies to discuss the differences and a quantitative survey that we started to use.