Title: Changes in the attitudes and behaviours of champions and antagonists in new business development

Authors: Yoshihiro Ito

Addresses: Faculty of Business Management, Tokyo University of Science, Japan

Abstract: This paper compares the behaviours of champions and antagonists. Champions and antagonists have big impacts on continuation and success or suspension and failure in the development of new businesses. Hypotheses are created through analysing three cases. By focusing on new business development, this paper discusses four people who act as champions and/or antagonists. A founding is that a person may change his/her stance (i.e., from a champion to an antagonist, and vice versa). The reasons for these stance changes are as follows: 1) changes in the environment surrounding the project; 2) changes in project activities; 3) persuasion and promotion of awareness among champions and antagonists by other champions and antagonists. Due to these reasons, real or potential changes in the benefits or disadvantages for champions or antagonists result in big changes in the attitudes and behaviours of champions and antagonists, to the extent that champions become antagonists and antagonists become champions. In addition, the impact of these changes in stance is extremely strong to the point that they could have suspended the new businesses. In these circumstances, it took the work of another champion to avoid the danger of suspension. This paper also presents a logical model and four insights.

Keywords: champions; antagonists; entrepreneurs; new business development; corporate venturing; innovation management; Canon; Sony; Playstation; intrapreneurs; entrepreneurship.

DOI: 10.1504/AJMSA.2016.080471

Asian Journal of Management Science and Applications, 2016 Vol.2 No.3, pp.296 - 313

Accepted: 15 Dec 2015
Published online: 25 Nov 2016 *

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