Danny Higgin's Grey MENA's Chief Creative Officer is GCI guest this month and asks "what's it like to be Bill Gates"

WHAT’S IT LIKE TO BE BILL GATES?

Or Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, Coco Chanel, Colonel Saunders, Giorgio Armani or Larry Page and Sergey Brin?

Most of us in our business lives marry a culture much as we marry not just our spouses but also their families. Some of us go through several of these cultures in the course of a career. And each time we do so we live by and are judged by that particular culture’s rules and perspective and understanding of reality. Welcome to the corporate life.

But what’s it like to be completely entrepreneurial in spirit, action, work and life?

Like Bill.

Unlike Bill most people in a corporation move to the cultural drum beat set by the long gone founder of the corporation and preserved by the modern guardians of that corporate culture, who, much like religious police, keep a watch on people’s behaviour and how they observe that corporation’s customs and codes.

But in a globalising world where innovative new technologies and companies are springing up from Lebanon to Laos, Korea to Kuala Lumpur this cultural conservatism is exactly the type of behaviour likely to bring a corporation to it’s knees.

‘WE DON’T DO THINGS THAT WAY AROUND HERE.’

‘Why not?”

‘BECAUSE IT’S JUST NOT US.’

‘Why not?’

BECAUSE IT’S NOT HOW WE SEE THINGS.’

‘Why not?’

‘BECAUSE IT WOULDN’T SUIT US.’

‘Why not?’

Which involves a mind-shift away from the ‘ this is the way things are done around here’.

A recent example is Sony Corporation, of course. Internally somewhere along the way Sony started acting like an old corporation. Full of notoriously autonomous divisions fighting internally (which always takes the focus off the real battle). And look what happened: Apple snuck up and completely broadsided them with the introduction of the iPod in the portable music player category, a category that Sony essentially invented. But Sony was still slow to react and took ages to roll out sleek Walkman models to challenge the iPod. By which time that horse had well and truly bolted. And that is only part of Sony’s problems now. Low-cost rivals in China and South Korea are quickly climbing up the technology ladder, creating brands as they go. How does a once dynamic company like Sony suffer such a fall from grace?

It happened to IBM of course. But they made a good show of becoming more dynamic in the early 90s. After years of losing the game to smaller more nimble players, IBM finally got it’s act together and refocused and restructured internally and started to compete with the upstarts and reclaim it’s leadership position. This internal focus was, as it often is, reflected in a more concise and focused communications platform, in this case manifested in the big leadership thought of ‘Solutions for a Small Planet’. Since then IBM has lost momentum again suggesting that its internal conservatism had not been sufficiently eroded and it slipped back into an Old World corporation. But let’s see what the Chinese can do with the computer division.

So how to grow cultures that remain vibrant and innovative and fresh and exciting as they were in the early, hectic, uncertain days of their lives?

Apple managed it. Although even they had their problems in the 80s and early nineties when founder Steve Jobs had left. Apple was pretty much on the operating table at the end of the eighties with a prognosis of 50/50. Jobs came back and bought his driving, striving entrepreneurialistic spirit with him and revitalised the company.

How? The secret as both Gates and Jobs know well is to nurture cultures of intrapreneurs.

In fact we may well be entering the age of the ‘intrapreneurials’ and ‘intrapreneurialism’. For those of you not familiar with the term, it is the notion that corporations should employ the type of individuals who would act like entrepreneurs within a large corporation.

Intrapreneurialism is what helps such large companies as Apple continue to innovate and respond to market conditions as if they were start-ups.

Likewise Microsoft. In truth Microsoft is a slightly different example since they have so much muscle they can buy entrepreneurs and switch them into intrepreneurs.

As time passes I think there will be one company who will be seen as the granddaddy of progressive corporations. 3M. Started around 1903 as a mining business its founders decided to create an entrepreneurial culture to develop ideas. And as 3M grew it moved to an intrapreneurial model. Harry Heltzer who died a few years ago at aged 94 was the embodiment of the 3M culture. Originally employed as a manual laborer he went on to invent one of the company’s most profitable products – reflective signs for motorways – and became one of 3M’s top executives encouraging and passing on the spirit of intraprenerialism. Anyone can have a great idea at 3M and move the corporation forward. And importantly gain from that.

And one of the new kids on the block who are almost a direct cultural descendent of this culture is Google. In February this year the magazine Fast Company highlighted the top 50 smart companies and Google was, not unsurprisingly, at number one. And then Fast Company went on to look at just how Google was so successful. And without mentioning the concept of intrapreneurialism it was evident that this is at the core of Google. A culture, which creates individual freedom hand in hand with accountable responsibility.

It’s competitive out there and worse everyday. The need to continually assess the way we do things as corporations has never been more important.

Because the future isn’t certain since it doesn’t exist. It needs to be created.

Just ask Bill.