Strategic Employees Innovation Plan

Tesla Inc. is an American company that designs and manufacturers electric vehicles.
Apart from electric vehicles manufacturing, Tesla is also heavily involved in renewable
energy industry (Bilbeisi & Kesse, 2017). Through SolarCity, one of its subsidiaries, the
company manufacturers solar panels, storage batteries, and installs solar systems (Bilbeisi &
Kesse, 2017). The company is based on California, USA. Since its founding in 2003, Tesla
has grown to become one of the most successful and innovative companies in the world. Its
electric vehicles and renewable energy appliances, such as solar panels and energy storage
batteries, are among the most innovative in the world. In order to sustain its growth
trajectory, Tesla needs to continue innovating. This paper presents a strategic employees
innovation plan that can help Tesla to become more innovative through encouraging greater
intrapreneurship.

Promoting Innovative Practices at Tesla

Even though Tesla has distinguished itself as a major innovative company, there are
still many ways that the company can make itself more innovative. To promote innovative
practices at the company, there are a number of measures that Tesla can take. The most
important one is to foster a culture of innovation at the workplace. Such a culture would
include support of experimentation, quick adaptability to change, open communication, and
high tolerance for failure (Deprez, Leroy & Euwema, 2018). Such measures are likely to
significantly promote innovative practices at the company.

Embedding Intrapreneurship Competency at Tesla

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Intrapreneurship is an innovator who develops and implements new ideas within an
established business organization (Chan et al., 2017). Unlike entrepreneurs who typically run
their own business organizations, intrapreneurs are employees of a given organization.
Through their innovative ideas, intrapreneurs can significantly improve the performance of a
business organization.

To embed intrapreneurship competency at the company, there a number of measures
that Tesla could take. One such measure is improving subject matter expertise of its
employees. The more employees are knowledgeable in a given field the more likely they are
to innovate. Another measure of embedding intrapreneurship competency at Tesla would
involve having management team that trusts, believes, and promotes innovative ideas of
employees. These two measures, when implemented well, have the potential of strongly
embedding intrapreneurship competency at Tesla.

Identifying Intrapreneurs at Tesla

What makes an intrapreneur to stand out is their innovative and creative nature (Woo,
2018). An organization that is good at spotting these qualities in an employee is likely to
quickly identify intrapreneurs and support them to come up with innovative products and
services that improve the performance of the organization. Intrapreneurs can be identified
through examination of various profiles of employees. Some of the characteristics that are
common to intrapreneurs include high levels of self-motivation, ambitious, risk-taker, results-
oriented, creative, brilliant, and great at generating new ideas (Woo, 2018). An employee
who possesses these qualities is likely to be a great intrapreneur. Thus, Tesla should look out
for such employees and support them to become more creative and innovative.

Supporting Intrapreneurs at Tesla

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No matter how many employees that can potentially be great intrapreneurs are within
an organization, they cannot do much if they are not encouraged and supported. One way in
which intrapreneurs can be encouraged is through suitable rewards. Employees who come up
with innovative ideas, products or services could be given a percentage of the returns from
their innovations. Alternatively, they could be put in charge of running the service or product
lines that they innovate.

Apart from financial rewards, intrapreneurs can also be encouraged through providing
them with the resources that they require to bring their innovative ideas to life (Deprez, Leroy
& Euwema, 2018). The resources could be in terms of time or materials. To come up with a
new product or service, an employee may need a lot of time and materials. Without these
resources, no matter how talented they are, they are unlikely to come up with anything new
that benefits the company. Thus, one way of encouraging intrapreneurs is through giving
them all the time, material, and financial support that they require to innovate.

How to Know When Employees Become More Innovative

Increased innovation of employees can be seen in multiple ways. The most obvious
metric that shows that employees in an organization have become more innovative is increase
in the number of new products and services that have been developed internally. An increase
in the efficiency of processes due to efforts of employees could also be a pointer that
employee innovation was increasing at the organization.

Conclusion

Employees are by far the most important asset for an organization. Used well, they
can transform an organization into a successful and competitive company that is able to
achieve both its short term and long-term goals. However, if they are not used well, an

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organization can decline or collapse altogether. As this paper has shown, even though Tesla is
a highly innovative company, there is still a lot of room to make it even more innovative.
Through identifying and nurturing the entrepreneurial instincts of some of its employees, the
electric vehicles manufacturer can become an even more innovative and creative company.

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References

Bilbeisi, K. M., & Kesse, M. (2017). Tesla: A successful entrepreneurship strategy. Morrow,
GA: Clayton State University.

Chan, K. Y., Ho, M. H. R., Kennedy, J. C., Uy, M. A., Kang, B. N., Chernyshenko, O. S., &
Yu, K. Y. T. (2017). Who wants to be an intrapreneur? Relations between employees’
entrepreneurial, professional, and leadership career motivations and intrapreneurial
motivation in organizations. Frontiers in psychology, 8, 2041.

Deprez, J., Leroy, H., & Euwema, M. (2018). Three chronological steps toward encouraging
intrapreneurship: Lessons from the Wehkamp case. Business Horizons, 61(1), 135-
145.

Woo, H. R. (2018). Personality traits and intrapreneurship: the mediating effect of career
adaptability. Career Development International.