Can all Entrepreneurs be in same team?

Entrepreneur is someone who takes initiatives and runs a startup. He is the brain behind the latest buzz in every magazine in town about the revolutionary business idea. Sounds great, right? The question is: Would you like each of your team members to be an entrepreneur? That brings us to the perennial question of having just one Entrepreneur vs. multiple maverick thinkers in the same organization.

Let us look at some of the advantages that this model is bound to offer:

1. More lateral thinking, more advantages: The team is bound to create a plethora of radical brainstorming ideas, some of which are going to be absolutely path-breaking.
2. High productivity:  With so many self-motivated individuals, the team is bound to have a very high productivity as each of the individual members will put his best foot forward.

While so far everything appears to be in favor of a team of mavericks, there are also several pitfalls:

1. No Follower, all leaders: Since the team has been formed of entrepreneurs, it will be highly difficult to develop any kind of command centre in the team. 
2. No common direction: Multiple radical thoughts will head to different directions which will lead to an absence of a common direction. In fact to some extent, the situation will look similar to the activities of atoms in the gaseous state.
3. Frequent conflicts due to high egos

So how exactly should one actually create such a high productive team? Or will it always remain an unfulfilled utopia? The answer to this lies in a few simple steps:

1. Creating a culture of intrapreneurs:The organization should promote and reward those with maverick commercially viable ideas. What this will essentially do is create a culture where people will be always willing to explore new set of processes, systems or ideas.

2. Grouping individuals with ideas in similar areas:While it might amount to limiting lateral thinking to some extent, it increases the prospect of a properly functional team as most team members will tend to respect each other. Also, it will help in providing a single focus direction to the team.

3. Reduce attrition by offering funding: Entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs are more likely to prefer to work independently and not as team. Hence in order to retain the team, it is essential for the company to provide incentive in the form of funding for great ideas generated from the team.

If these steps can be effectively implemented, it is indeed possible to form such a high productive team!