Executives operate within an organizational setting that is characterized by diverse stakeholders with widely varying and conflicting needs, values, and perspectives. These corporate entrepreneurs grapple with several mutually opposing ideas or priorities at any given time. The complexity of the business environment requires them to promote stability and growth, tradition and innovation, collaboration and competition, order and freedom – all at the same time.
Entrepreneurial as well executive genius lies in recognizing that these are actually complementary and symbiotic, just like the two sides of the same coin. This has been the mandate of entrepreneurs across the ages and contemporary organizational executives alike. As a result, executives synergistically fuse together numerous contrasting perspectives towards collective benefit. Intrepid entrepreneurs across the ages have been doing just that, in order to generate disruptive innovation.
Entrepreneurial Synergy is obtained by the transcendence of dichotomy, through the creative integration of opposing perspectives.
Entrepreneurial Synergy is obtained by means of Respect, Reconcile and Realize.
Respect
Acknowledge the value or merit that resides in each perspective
Reconcile
Integrate and harmonize the competing values and priorities
Realize
Harness the benefits in the form of innovative outcomes
Learning Outcomes
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Appreciate the phenomenon of stakeholder inter-dependence in organizational life, and the need for a co-operative or synergistic approach to value creation
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Respect and value different people and divergent perspectives, and systematically leverage these to create “win-win” outcomes
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Develop perceptual flexibility and behavioural adaptability, so as to recognize complementarity instead of conflict
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Learn how to harmonize opposing priorities and perspectives as well as reconcile paradoxes and dilemmas
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Evolve innovative solutions through an integrative approach
