Submitted by Paul Mashauri on Tue, 08/05/2012 – 12:27am

1. Administrative Entrepreneurship: If you want your employees to be passionate about your business, drive change and innovate new products, you as a leader must offer administrative support and infrastructure to enable your team realize their creative potential. In the eyes of an entrepreneurship expert Hans Schollhammer, such leaders are referred to as administrative intra-corporate entrepreneurs. Let me share to you the success story of a corporate leader Nehemia Kyando Mchechu, Director General, National Housing Corporation (NHC) whose leadership style and vision is of a typical administrative corporate entrepreneur. I started drawing interest to know more about Nehemia about four years ago when one of my friends and again a very talented marketer namely Abdalah Singano (currently working as a marketing manager, Stanbic Bank) joined Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) as a the youngest marketing manager, I presume in the history of the banking sector in Tanzania. Nehemia who was the youngest CEO in the banking sector by then had an eye to spot Abdalah’s talent just when the two managed to meet for a conversation and the CBA CEO took the risk to engage the talented young graduate for such a bigger and challenging position in the dynamic and competitive banking sector.

Abdalah had just graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam and was working with Vodacom Tanzania as an intern. Since then, I started observing Nehemia’s administrative style and I came to realize that he is amongst such CEOs who are self- starters, risk takers and the first to try new products at the market even when every other player is hesitant to face such uncertainty which scares the investors and the employees especially in fragile economies like ours. During his time with CBA, Nehemia kept on inspiring his team to innovate and he championed for the introduction of new products at the market one of them being mortgage finance. His successful leadership with CBA attracted the attention of many people in the public and private sector. This resulted into him being appointed the Director General of the National Housing Corporation (NHC), when the Government of Tanzania decided to appoint a new management team which could restructure the old agency. And when he took off office, Nehemia continued to demonstrate how entrepreneurial leadership can turn things around when he made difficult decisions including recruitment of new competent and entrepreneurial staff who could help him transform NHC to a word class real estate agency and cater for needs of the low, medium and upper level clientele. To date NHC stands among the best case experiences that corporate leaders are learning on how organizations can be turned around.

NHC has developed a five years strategic plan which plans to build about 15,000 houses with an average of 5,000 houses per year. Some of Nehemia’s core strengths as an entrepreneur leader worth to learn from include his ability to develop a strong team, ability to make bold decisions, taking risks, encourage greater innovation and inventions and the ability to communicate his vision amongst his team, company stakeholders and the general public.

The Sony Corporation is also credited for having administrative entrepreneurs. At Sony Corporation, research and development is not an option. It’s a must. This is a commitment of the company administrators and it means the readiness of the management at Sony to integrate other units within the company structure eg) marketing, customer service, distribution in the designing and development of new products. Sony walkman was a result of this integration which was a role played by the management.

2. Opportunistic Entrepreneurship

My experience talking to a number of people who consider quitting their current employments to start their own ventures shows that a lot of talented individuals want to start their own businesses not because of a low pay by their employers but because of the corporate environment which limits employees to realize their full potential including freedom to try out inventions of new products, services and processes within the corporate environment. Psychologically, they feel underutilized thus start searching for a greater freedom where they can exercise their talents to receive moral satisfaction for their creativity to be seen, recognized and appreciated. This means that companies need to identify this class of corporate entrepreneurs and loosen the formal structure to allow freedom for the employees to pursue commercial opportunities both within and outside the organization.

In rececognizance of this, one of our clients, The Financial Sector Deepening Trust (FSDT) an organization that works to provide greater access to financial services in Tanzania launched an SME Innovation Challenge Award which seek to encourage financial institutions in Tanzania develop innovative products which will give SMEs more access to financial services and products. Under the scheme, financial institutions are encouraged to submit concept note of their feasible products of which FSDT will provide a grant that is worth between $ 50,000 to $ 500,000. However, successful applicants will have to match the same amounts of funds to get the product to the market. Ideally, FSDT aims at encouraging banks, MFIs and non-financial institutions take the risk of developing innovative products that will suit the expanding SMEs sector in Tanzania. Ideally this is what it means by opportunistic entrepreneurship. If your company provides a greater space for the staff to see and go for internal and external commercial opportunities, chances are higher that you will become a market leader in the increasingly changing product and service market. In developed markets such as Western Europe, North America, China and India this is a very common business practice.

For instance Quad/ Graphics Inc, the company that prints U.S News & World Report, News week etc made a risk decision to establish Quad/Tech back in years when printing technology started to change rapidly with computers. The company provided resources to its subsidiary that its engineers can exercise full control into developing new printing technology and sell it out globally. Heidelberg as well, which is probably one of the leading printing machinery manufacturing and supplier in the world invest heavily in enabling their engineers spot opportunities at the market and innovate various products according to time. When we decided to venture into the printing industry two years ago and when we established the 24 Hrs Print & Media Technologies, a company which specializes in digital and off-set printing, imaging technologies, document management solutions and motion pictures, I was taking time to research and understand better the printing industry. In fact I had long-time interest in the printing industry and had already established a good network of friends in the industry having done the magazine business and a newspaper soon after I graduated from the university.

Since then I used to study better the industry from my friends who were the industry leaders like Jamana Printers, the company that I used to print with but this time around when we decided to purchase the printing machinery, I went further to know the details including different generations of printing machinery, reliable machinery suppliers in the world, modern printing technology and even the profitability of the business itself. The research brought me to Heidelberg Offices Tanzania located at TAZARA and I managed to meet the country manager, Heidelberg Tanzania who provided me with enough information and orientation of the Heidelberg printing technology. During our conversation, I came to realize that most of the printing equipments used by many printers to date such as Heidelberg KORD machine is already outdated and is being phased out of the market because Heidelberg engineers have already invented new technology which is superior and relevant to the modern needs and demands. I was amazed to see print outs of the latest Heildelberg technology. The printed pictures looked very clear and the details were so sharp and when I looked at them, it was as if I met the real objects. I took the two pictures with me that they can get me reminded of the best technology I should work harder to afford in the very near future. This superb imaging technology means that Heidelberg understands that its edge in the business depends primarily in the opportunistic entrepreneurial excellence of its engineers who work tirelessly to compete against the rising digital printing brands such as Zeroxe and Conika Minolta.

The case experience of the Indian Tycon Sunil Bharti Mittat, the founder of Airtel

Before we move to another class of corporate entrepreneurs, let us take a look at the life of the Indian tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittat. When Bharti Group acquired Zain Tanzania, many of us wanted to know more about Sunil who is not only a worldly acclaimed billionaire but also a well respected first generation entrepreneur and philanthropist. Sunil graduated from Punjab University and founded Bharti as a first generation entrepreneur in 1976 at the age of 18.

His seed money to start a business came from his father Sat Paul Mittat who was active in politics and was elected a member of the parliament (MP) from the congress party in Punjab. Sunil borrowed Rs 70,000 from his father and he used the money as a startup capital to establish a factory specializing in the manufacturing of crankshafts for local bicycle manufacturing companies in Ludhiana which was India’s most popular industrial area. After three years, Sunil diversified into manufacturing of yarn and stainless-steel sheets which was used for surgical utensils. In 1980 Sunil made a shocking decision when he sold his factories and moved to Bombay to start afresh. This decision was similar to the one that was taken by Tanzania’s industrial tycoon Reginald Mengi, founder of the IPP conglomerate, when in the late 1980 decided to sale out some of his manufacturing plants to invest in the electronic and Print Media. Similarly, Sunil had already identified another window of opportunity in Bombay and in 1982 he struck a deal with Suzuki Motor Corporation of Japan to becoming an exclusive agent in India for their electric power generators. He was very aware of the frequent power shortages in India and as an entrepreneur saw that as an opportunity for him to push for the massive sales of the Suzuki brand.

But Sunil’s business acumen was tested hardly in 1984 when the government of India declared the imports of gensets illegal. Sunil was hit hard by the decision and he became the earlier victims of the hastily pulled off liberalization process. This was the time when Sunil demonstrated his superior business acumen and instead of taking time to complain, he left India for a business visit in the markets of Taiwan, Korea and Japan. The tour became a defining moment in his life as he became connected to the telecom giants in Taiwan who were manufacturing a more advanced telephone instruments which did not have the circular dialing system but delicate buttons instead. He realized that the new technology could sale massively in India and in few days time he managed to negotiate the best deal and signed the supplier contract for India. Still the business was not easy for Sunil since the Indian Government had restrictions for importation of ready-made gadgets. To overcome the challenge, Sunil decided to disassemble the gadgets in Taiwan, import the components to India and get them assembled again to their original form that he named “Mittbrau” which in reality meant Mittal Brothers.

But when the Bharti business started to flourish again, the Indian Government granted licenses to 52 other firms to manufacture touch-tone phones in India. Noting that the market is going to become more competitive, Sunil decided to diversify his business and in this time around, he grabbed a license to manufacture fax machines, answering machines and cordless phones. Bharti continued to grow father and became India’s biggest manufacturer of these instruments. His attitude to risk and accept businesses that he was not even aware with an anticipation that he will learn in the process paid him off in 1992 when the Government embarked in a major liberalization programme that invited license bids for operating mobile phone networks in various parts of India. Sunil was new to this technology but he delegated the management of his factories, his brothers and himself to London to learn the technology. In London, he took the help of the world class telecom experts and when he presented his bid before the Indian government, Bharti was granted the license to launch its mobile phone networks in India’s four largest cities.

When Bharti was granted the license, some of the disgruntled competitors went to court against Bharti which could go ahead with its networks only in Delhi. This was because Sunil had under estimated the initial capital investment which he did set up at Rs. 2.5 crores per city while the actual costs were high by a multiple of four. Sunil worked harder to mobilize the financial resources and managed to launch Bharti Airtel in Delhi under the brand name Airtel.

Currently Bharti Airtel is Indian’s telecom market leader having captured 20% of the market share. The company revenue are over $ 4 billion up from $ 510 million in 2003. By the end of June 2006, Bharti Airtel had 24.58 million customers, including over 23 million mobile phone users, with fixed-line and broadband customers making up the reminder.

source: http://www.paulmashauri.com/article/entrepreneurial-leadership