13th Annual International Management Conference Proceeding

1. Leadership - Any organizational entrepreneurship team must have leadership. Leadership involves the
discerning ability to strike to the significant part, to clear away the fluff and arrive at reality. Leadership
involves vision, asking what an institution or program or department might become. However, vision is
more than intellectual. It involves the affective realm. The entrepreneur makes that vision effective and
determines ways to make it into a reality.
2. People and their Empowerment - It is people who help successfully complete an entrepreneurial project,
and it is people who will use it.
3. Learning - Entrepreneurship, empowerment, and successful innovation involve learning.
4. Organizational Cultures - Culture is unseen, highly influential, difficult to change, but impossible to
ignore. It affects our perceptions, desires, goals, actions and feelings. Doing entrepreneurship in
organizations means developing a high awareness for the various cultures one encounters. Culture is
shared meaning.
5. Rewards - The three most powerful rewards I have observed in academe are (a) money, (b) time, and
(c) an intrinsic feeling of a job well done.
6. Technology and bureaucracy – involves adequate technology with less bureaucracy
7. Commitment and Community – in intrapreneurial ventures
8. Efficiency and Effectiveness
9. Relentless Dedication
Case study
Mr Maina* (not his real name) quit his job in the 1970s after working for 3 years with the East African industry to
start a transport business, delivering materials for clients within Kenya and outside to as far away as Zambia. The
future looked very bright.
Then the unthinkable happened. Over the years the East African community crumpled and the Tanzanian border was
closed down. At that point in time he hard hired 19 lorries and they were trapped in Tanzania while ferrying
perishable goods. All negotiations could not allow the release of the vehicles across the border so the goods were sold
on the roadside to residents at throwaway prices. The solutions could only be reached at intergovernmental level at it
took six months to reach a solutions. Meanwhile the owners of the trucks were baying for his blood. Things became so
bad that he had to go into hiding.
Driving past a shopping centre in Kiambu one day he stopped to give a lift to a woman who was carrying a heavy load
of maize that she had brought to Kiambu from Kariobangi in Nairobi (about 70 away) to a posho mill. He discovered
there were no posho mills in Nairobi. So he bought a posho mill and set it up at Kariobangi. Waiting for the first
customer with anticipation started. None came. One day, one week, two weeks, three weeks, still no customer.
It was time for a reality check. What had begun as an exiting idea was turning into nightmare! His first experience in
business was still fresh in his mind. Upon investigation of this turn of events he found out that as a result of a
drought/famine that was raging through the land at that time maize was hard to come by particularly in Nairobi. He
was just in the verge of despair when a brilliant idea hit him. Why not buy maize from the cereals and produce board
so he could sell it to people who required maize flour? That way he could rescue his business from a possible stillbirth.
He still had to overcome the hurdles of acquiring a licence to operate a mill in Kariobangi, purchase more maize from
the cereal and produce board especially due to rationing due to the famine. With time his reputation as a reliable miller
grew. He secured a contract to supply maize to prisons in Nairobi and this kept him going even after the famine.
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