Marketing lacks entrepreneurs

I’m writing in response to last week’s article by Alan Mitchell about npd deficiencies (MW May 13).

My experience is that, while the big strategic questions such as line extension versus new brand are important, the fundamental issue appears to be that large organisations have lost the ability to behave entrepreneurially.

Too many companies kill ideas before they have been fully developed through risk-averse, hierarchical approval structures, and they stifle brand development through restrictive brand positionings and blinkered category strategies. In short, they are not generating enough radical new ideas, and those that they do create risk being killed off before their real potential has been realised.

True entrepreneurs don’t just have a new idea – they shape it, build it and champion it through to market, no matter what the obstacles.

I believe that marketing is the entrepreneurial engine in a large organisation. Senior marketers need to seriously challenge what they are doing to both create a flow of radical new ideas and ensure that their organisation is truly nurturing and building them, rather than, in reality, just creating more and more obstacles for them.

By achieving this on their brands, individual marketers can buck the downward trend in genuine innovation.

Rob Murray

Managing director

Distillery

(e-mail)