Haier, beyond strategic intrapreneurship

When I studied intrapreneurship, as part of an EC project, I came across “Corporate rebels”. I am a fan, and I would highly recommend subscribing to their newsletter.

Haier

In “corporate rebels”, the authors mention Haier. I first came across Haier after reading “The day after tomorrow”. Haier is mentioned in lots of books about intrapreneurship. Haier is a shining example of intrapreneurship at a strategic level or a truly entrepreneurial organisation. A network, ecosystem or platform of mini-companies that are extremely close to the market.

Start-up Factory

So the corporate rebels decided to write a book about Haier specifically, titled “Start-up Factory: Haier’s RenDanHeYi model and the end of management as we know it”. Compulsory reading for anyone interested in innovation, adaptability, organisation structures, employee engagement, change management and any other business buzzword you can imagine.

The Haier principles

It is the case study for “Reinventing organisations”. Explaining Rendanheyi. Rendanheyi is built on a number of principles:

1. Creating a great customer experience,
2. Everyone is an entrepreneur.
3. Equitable sharing of created value among the three principal actors: the value enjoyed by the customer, the value received by the organisation and its stakeholders.
4. People are a company’s most valuable asset, and two types are involved in creating value: entrepreneurs (internal) and customers (external).
5. Zero distance to the user.
6. Freedom to create and act autonomously.
7. Fierce internal competition.
8. Removal of all middle managers.
9. Blockchain-enabled contracts.
10. An open system (anyone that can add value to the customer can join the Haier ecosystem).
11. Emergent leadership (The willingness…