Rolph Balgobin: Why Every Company Needs a Chief Entrepreneur

Rolph Balgobin is the founder and current chairman of The Oxbridge International School, part of The Quicksilver Group, a multinational with subsidiaries operating in a diverse array of industries, including energy, property development, manufacturing and education. This article will look at the role of chief entrepreneur, examining the reasons why many companies are coming to see the need for an entrepreneur at the helm to disrupt business models and explore new horizons.

To avoid becoming obsolete, every large business must face the realities of disruption and continuous innovation. With markets becoming increasingly competitive, new growth is unlikely to be produced by the organisational structures that characterise established companies today.

Undeniably, many big businesses have enjoyed extraordinary success from finding a successful business model and building on it over time, enabling them to continuously improve that model and scale their business to realise significant commercial success. Nevertheless, to achieve substantial continued growth in the 21^st century requires a different mindset, forcing companies to look beyond existing business models and do much more than simply launching new products, as these actions alone are unlikely to generate sufficient continued growth.

To be successful in the current climate and beyond, businesses must not only exploit their established business model but also simultaneously invest in exploration. To achieve growth, businesses will need to innovate entirely new value propositions and business models. To excel at exploitation and exploration concurrently is extremely challenging due to the very different mindsets, cultures, tools and skills required. However, only businesses capable of achieving this will thrive in the 21^st century.

A McKinsey study revealed that 80% of CEOs believed their business model was at risk. Alarmingly, the same research showed that just 6% of executives were happy with their company’s innovation performance. These findings highlight a need for businesses to invest in creating organisational structures capable of supporting breakthrough growth.

Companies need to look beyond traditional product innovation, technology, and research and development, focusing instead on new business models and value propositions. They also need to create new organisational structures conducive to simultaneous exploitation and exploration, enabling the business to grow and thrive.

The role of chief entrepreneur involves spearheading exploration efforts. Sharing equal power with the CEO, chief entrepreneurs focus exclusively on reimagining the company’s future. Managing a team of entrepreneurs and a portfolio of innovation experiments, the chief entrepreneur is the guardian of the company’s innovation culture.

Forward-looking companies are increasingly coming to recognise the need for a chief entrepreneur in the C-suite to fuel innovation, disruption and transformation. One example is Ping An, a company that initially appointed Jessica Tan as CIO, later promoting her to Co-CEO and executive director. During her tenure with the company, Tan served as Ping An’s chief entrepreneur, developing a solid portfolio, including Good Doctor, one of the world’s most successful healthcare platforms. According to Ping An chairman and founder Peter Ma, he was looking for more than just another C-suite executive; he wanted someone with an entrepreneurial mindset, recognising the need for innovation to survive the digital disruption.

Organisations keen to create new growth need to make the distinction between efficiency innovation, which sustains the current business, and transformative innovation, exploring new horizons and potentially disruptive business models. Cost-cutting exercises and business process overhauls may make the company more efficient, but focusing solely on these types of innovation is likely to be insufficient to ensure a company’s long-term survival. Likewise, adding new products or features may boost revenue initially, but to ensure sustained financial health and viability, businesses need to invest in transformative growth, continually experimenting and expanding beyond their core model to reach untapped customer demographics and capitalise on unrealised market opportunities.