Entrepreneurship Climate Analysis
The business environment has shifted from the normal make-profit setup to a strategy-oriented setup. This has been amid the changing entrepreneurial environments that have demanded that corporate leadership approach the business world with strategies that are well refined in order to be able to conquer the arising challenges. Therefore, innovation and change have been one of the core factors that have been considered in most cases, with a requirement for new ideas each and every day.
This requires that any particular business or organizational setup create a leadership structure that is proactive and new-idea and innovation oriented. CVS/CAREMARK is one of the insurance firms that have taken the issues of new idea with seriousness.Research Findings and DiscussionAn analysis of CVS/CAREMARK revealed that this firm was geared towards ensuring that it positioned itself in such a way that it was able to meet certain conditions that enabled it not only to survive in the market but also to thrive in the industry. Therefore, one of the strategies that were employed was the seeking of new ideas and creation of effective ways that would enable it to implement them. According to Henricks (1997), one has to be paranoiac in order to succeed in some areas of business.
This is based on the fact that the competitors that one has are not friends but groups of people who wants to take away the opportunities that one has. Having realized this concept, CVS/CAREMARK has always encouraged its employees to come up with new ideas, analyze them and evaluate their viability and then work on models of how they can be implemented.This firm therefore has adopted an open attitude towards innovation and change since it has an understanding that the industry in which it is operating in is competitive and for one to be successful there is need for a continuous evaluation and adoption of new models that would spur the firm to new heights. To be able to achieve this, the firm has worked on various ways that it can use to reward resourceful employees within its premises. This has ensured that it is not only the top management that is committed to innovation and change but also every employee in this company as each works towards adding value to the organization in order to be rewarded for his/her efforts.
As a result of these commitments by this firm to explore the benefits of innovation and change, there are various recommendations that can be made towards streamlining its activities in such as way that it is able to reap maximum profits. First, despite the fact that the company is committed to innovation and change and in rewarding its employees for ideas of change and innovation, these rewards must be proportional to the rewards that are given out to employees (Henricks, 1997). Therefore, employees should be encouraged to work on coming up with viable plans and ideas, rather than emerging with abstract plans that cannot benefit the organization. On the other hand, rewarding of employees should be done in proportion to the benefits that this firm reaps from their ideas. Similarly, the management structure should be coined in such a way that it does not just depend on the employees for every idea.
Instead, it should be able as a management to formulate ideas and policies too that will guide the firm to succeed in the industry.There are various examples that can be given to cite the strategies that the firm has been using in reaching out to its customers. One of them is the reward system. This system has been integrated into its policies whereby employees who excel throughout the year are rewarded for their efforts at the end of the year. The reward program is named Caremark’s Trio and eThanks Programs where employees are rewarded a prize that ranges from $5 to $250 (Caremark Rx, Inc, 2008). Such rewards are able to motivate the employees to work even harder as their efforts are recognized and rewarded.
