Entrepreneurial Audit : Goals and Recommendations- THE BEVERLY HILLS TEDDY BEAR COMPANY-SEE ATTCED PAPER FOR REFERENCE

The formatting requirements for the Action Steps & Recommendations assignment are as follows:

• Cover Page
• Page numbers in the upper right corner of each page and running headers
• APA citations and References Page
• At least 8 pages in length, not counting the title or reference pages
• Double-spaced
• 1″ margins on all sides
• 12 point Times New Roman font

Be sure to cover all of these key issues in your critique. Some issues could be covered in multiple areas of the critique. The first item is mandatory, and must be addressed somewhere in your project.

• MANDATORY: How innovative, risk-taking, and proactive is this venture?  Position the company in the entrepreneurial grid (see Chapter 3 and Chapter 13 of the textbook).  Characterize its entrepreneurial intensity, and discuss whether you think this is an appropriate level of entrepreneurial intensity.
• Does the company set innovation goals?  Do these cover product and process innovation?
• How market-driven is this enterprise?  Draw implications.
• Do they allocate sufficient resources to support entrepreneurial behavior by their employees?  What critical resources are needed, in your opinion, to effectively capitalize on the key opportunities confronting them today?
• Has their strategy for identifying and obtaining resources changed over time?  Do they attempt to own or to leverage resources?  Do any of these resources provide a sustained source of competitive advantage?  How well have they managed this?  Are they now more resource-driven than opportunity-driven or vice versa?
• Is their cost structure more fixed-cost-based or variable-cost-based?  Characterize the venture in terms of operating leverage and draw implications in terms of how appropriately they are run from an operating leverage vantage point.
• Apply the traits or characteristics associated with the entrepreneurial personality to the senior executives of this organization and draw conclusions. 
• What is the dominant management style in the company?  How much does delegation feature in the management style of upper management? Middle management?  Can you site prominent examples of giving up control to gain control?
• Critique the structure of the company.  In what ways does it support or constrain entrepreneurship? Is it flat?  How does the organizational structure encourage or discourage innovation by employees? 
• How many functional areas /departments get involved in creating new products, services & processes?
• How tight or loose is the organizational control system?  Is there slack to support entrepreneurial initiative? Provide examples of controls that support or hinder entrepreneurship.
• Look at the way in which the company evaluates and rewards employees.  Are the appraisal and reward systems encouraging entrepreneurial behavior?  Explain why or why not.
• In addition to rewards, what sort of awards does the company provide employees?
• Examine the hiring practices of the firm from an entrepreneurial perspective.
• Describe how open communication is in the company.  Can anybody communicate with anybody?  How efficiently?
• What kind of culture does the company have?  What are the key values?  How are these reinforced?  How strong is the culture?  Is it supportive of entrepreneurship?
• How bureaucratic is this company in terms of policies and procedures, approval cycles, and speed in decision-making?
• How do people in the company feel about change?
• Is failure tolerated in this company?  In what ways?  How do they learn from failures?
• Does the company operate with an ongoing sense of urgency— if so, how is this urgency reinforced?
• What is the most entrepreneurial department or area in the company?  What is the least entrepreneurial?  In both cases, why?
• Identify two innovation champions in the company.  Why do you think they are champions?
• What is the most entrepreneurial thing the company has done in the past two years?
• Of the above, what do you see as the major problem area in this venture today?