Introduction
Innovation is considered to be one of the driving factors for current business companies. The impact of globalisation and the subsequent increase in the market competition lead the companies to facilitate unique and creative approaches not only in product or service but also in the strategic decision making as well (Benlamri and Sparer 2016). In response to this, the role of the business leaders becomes pivotal and relevant enough to manage and execute the strategic plans effectively. Henceforth, it can be argued that there is an intricate relationship between the leadership approach and innovation. As a matter of fact, Bagheri (2017) opined that leadership provides guidance to the innovative practice and makes it pragmatic enough to meet the objectives of the organisation profoundly.
The current report is going to understand the link between leadership and innovation in entrepreneurship and find out the way leadership becomes innovative and helps the organisations to gain competitive advantage in the market. For a better understanding, the current research emphasises on three different companies of different industries such as Novartis, McKesson Corporation and LendLease Australia.
Task 1: Entrepreneurship and innovation leadership
Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation (NPC) is a renowned pharmaceutical company around the world. The company is highly focused on the role of the innovation and creativity as the core principle of delivering better service to the global community. Therefore, the leadership practice of the organisation is also focused on innovative and creative strategic measures that can meet the vision and objectives of NPC. From the research of Taylor (2019) the rapid changing global healthcare environment and the related challenges compel the healthcare institutions and enterprises to remodel its current organisational structure. The same practice has been made by Novartis where the global transformation influences the company to reinforce innovation into its core organisational culture in association with boosting the skills and abilities of the diverse workforce to meet the market demand and contribute to the betterment of the global society (novartis.us 2020). Vasant Narasimhan is the CEO of Novartis and he implements a different kind of leadership practice within the organisation so that the practice of innovation and creativity will be continued (Taylor 2019). In an interview with Fortune magazine, Vasant told that he believed in purpose driven leadership approach where the leader must have a vision and urge to carry it forward (Gharib 2019). However, he also argued that it was not possible for a leader to carry out the vision and execute it alone. Therefore, empowering the team to think and feel the same is also essential. From the article of Arivayagan and Pihie (2017) it can be derived that a successful leader not only envisions the future but also play the role to guide the entire workforce to follow the same way so that it will be beneficial for the organisation and it will able to achieve the long term goal. Therefore, the relationship between entrepreneurship and leadership innovation is highly interlinked.
McKesson Corporation also emphasises on the unprecedented complexities in healthcare. The value of the organisation resonates one product, one partner and one patient at a time. Therefore, care and value the patients is considered to be one of the important aspects for McKesson Corporation to continue its pharmaceutical business. The company specialises in Oncology and leading the US market for 25 years for value based care and innovation in oncology care model (novartis.us 2019). It proves that the organisation is highly focused on innovation and creativity at the core of it business model. Veteran McKesson leader, Brian Tyler became the new CEO of the company in 2019, succeeding John Hammergren. The leadership approach of Brian Tyler is somewhat different from the CEO of Novartis (novartis.us 2020). He is more focused on the management rather than the employees and he believes that success can be achieved through the assistance of talented Board of Directors and executives. The focus is set on the exponential value of the customers and patients of McKesson Corporation. The emphasis of Bran Tyler is on the quality of production and the sales growth of the McKesson products across the globe. From an economics background and profound knowledge in sales due to his 3 years’ experience in the distribution and related business of McKesson Corporation in North America, Tyler made it clear that the organisation will never compromise with the quality and innovation of the products (Bloomberg.com 2019). The focus is vested more on the consumer centric business approach that requires innovation and creativity to a great extent. Therefore, the entrepreneurship and innovation leadership in McKesson Corporation can be seen from its sales growth and profitability.
LendLease is successfully operates its business in Australia. Being a construction company, LendLease is highly aware of the health and safety measures and procures deep emphasis over the customers and shareholders. Innovation and creativity are identified as the major assets of the company which is successfully guided by the vision and values of its CEO Stephen McCann (Lendlease.com 2020). He is committed to the ethical standards and specifically interested in building construction for the benefit of the community. It helps the organisation to make a strong position in the Australian market. The organisation emphasises on the skills and abilities of its engineers as it is the key driving factor for the organisation to make a better organisational practice (Lendlease.com 2019). From the research of Ottosson et al. (2017) it can be argued that skills and abilities of the employees are very important for the innovation and creativity. The vision and the willingness to make something different contributes to the process of incorporating innovation into business. In fact, the role of the leader is also pertinent in order to encourage and engage the employees to carry out innovation. However, in case of McCann, there are some gap in the leadership approach in terms of understanding relevance of creativity in competitive market and preparing the employees to achieve it (Patrick 2019). As a result of that a gulf between entrepreneurship and leadership innovation can be seen in case of LendLease.
Task 2: Entrepreneurial opportunities
For Novartis, there are plenty of entrepreneurial opportunities for the organisation for its future business success. As the organisation is emphasised on innovation and creativity therefore the leadership practice is also shaped in the same way so that it can meet the demand in the market. Johnsson et al. (2016) opined that in an innovation organisational environment, it is pertinent for the leaders to understand the ability and efficacy of the employees and designs the organisational environment in such a way that meet the individual and collective interests of the employees. A flexible organisational environment with providing enough exposure for the employees to nourish their skills and techniques is very essential in order to continue the practice of creativity and innovation in business. The leadership approach of Vasant also facilitates the same where the employees get enough opportunity to ventilate and execute their skills and creativity in manufacturing products or providing services. As a matter of fact, the company is more count on excellence and benevolence rather than making it profit oriented. It is considered to be one of the great strategies of the CEO of Novartis that can help the organisation to gain more achievements and opportunities in future and enrich its brand value as well. The experience and excellence of the CEO of Novartis, Vasant Narasimhan, creates more opportunities for the organisation in terms of product differentiation. According to the research of Anderson (2017) the product differentiation process is related to the idea generation stage of the entrepreneurship process model. For Novartis, the idea generation of Vasant Narsimhan leads the organisation to offer more advanced medicines for the patients in future.
On the other hand, the leadership skills of Brian Tyler fits the aims and objectives of McKesson Corporation. Under the leadership of Tyler, McKesson started expanding its business in the global market in a more robust manner. The focus of Tyler is set on the sales growth and incur more profitability for a better future of the organisation. As a result of that he made some decisions and plan for exploiting the opportunities for the organisation. Therefore, the aggressive market expansion with maximising the patients and customers become one of the profound strategies for McKesson to compete in the international pharmaceutical market. Mazouz et al. (2019) pointed out that the success of the organisation depends on the decision making and effective planning of its leader. It provides the leaders to get motivated and focused enough to the organisational objectives and set a future goal that can guide towards achieving it. The innovative leadership practice of Tyler creates opportunity for McKesson to achieve competitive edge in the market by capitalising the market more aggressively and increase the distribution of products to a great scale so that it will easily meet the targeted revenue generation for the organisation.
In case of LendLease, the leadership innovation of Stephen McCann tries to create an ethical consideration while operating business. The commitment and respect towards the society helps McCann one of the successful contractors in Australia. However, shortage of skilled engineers and lack of proper evaluation of the merits of the engineers create a challenge for LendLease to provide quality services to the clients. Therefore, emphasising on the innovation and creativity is highly relevant for the organisation to facilitate an extensive practice where the organisation is able to foster creativity with a skilled workforce. The leadership approach of McCann creates some opportunities in terms of project creation and management and control of the quality of workforce. The company puts emphasis on the efficacy of its engineers and their abilities that can make the organisation highly successful in the competitive market. The opportunity for the organisation is to set an example of skills and abilities of its workforce and its importance to make sustainable business. According to Bagheri and Akbari (2018) the management and control practice is associated with evaluating the resources and find out any gap that can create obstacle for the success of the organisation. In response to this, for LendLease, the shortage of skilled engineers is identified as the biggest challenge that obscures the opportunity of the organisation to become the most successful construction company in Australia.
Task 3: Entrepreneurial action
The entrepreneurial action will focused on the case study of LendLease where the organisation fails to get the opportunity of becoming the leading construction company in Australia due to its shortage of engineers’ skills. Therefore, it is essential for LendLease to create an internal training and development process that can help the organisation to resolve its shortage of workforce skills. At first the before implementing the training and development of the employees, the organisation must review its training related policies. It is important for the organisation to follow all the norms and regulation of the Australian government and at the same time also emphasises on the international standards (Fontana and Musa 2017). Therefore, reviewing the policies is considered to be one of the important aspects that the organisation must follow at first.
The next step is associated with a need recognition and generation. The purpose of the need generation is to understand the vitality of the need and take necessary steps to meet the demand properly. Therefore, an employee survey is required so that the organisation will understand the kind of problems they have faced in field works. After the need analysis a feasibility study will be prepared in order to make the need of training relevant and feasible with the budget of the company. It is essential that the initial planning of the training and development has to be relevant to the budget of the organisation so that it will be possible to implement the training and development practice successfully.
The next step is to set the goals and objectives of the training and development of the engineers. The training expert is responsible to set the goals and objectives. Then the training and development will be initiated. The training and development will be conducted in tow phase. The first phase will be the theoretical learning practice where the engineers will acquire theoretical knowledge and principles of their job. The next step will be the on-job performance. It is the practical phase where the engineer are able to execute their theoretical knowledge in practical field. As a result of that it will be highly effective for the organisation to create and generate better skill development of the engineers.
Nevertheless, a performance evaluation plan will be staged with the purpose to monitor and analyse the degree of progress in the workforce. It is very essential for any training and development initiative as the success ratio of the training and development can be projected through the performance evaluation. The management will be responsible for this evaluation and provides rating for the development of the engineers. LendLease understands the importance of its workforce and the need for conducting the training and development practice. Therefore, the expectation of the organisation is very high to meet the objectives and facilitate a better and successful working process that can bring future opportunity for the organisation.
Conclusion
The above discussion is trying to create a better understanding of entrepreneurship and leadership innovation in current business. For proper and contextual understanding, the report chooses three different organisations such as Novartis, McKesson and LendLease so that a comparative study can be made. Based on the study, it can be stated that leadership plays a major role in successful implementation of innovation in business and foster strategic advantage in the competitive market. Therefore, it can be concluded that the report successfully elucidates the relationship between entrepreneurship and leadership innovation and the effectiveness of leadership can generate high advantage for the business to gain opportunity for future business orientation.
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