Working Together: The Franchisor and the Entrepreneurial Franchisee

Franchising attracts many creative and innovative people. But it requires uniformity. Sound like trouble? Indeed, it seems franchisors and entrepreneurs make strange bedfellows. Yet successful franchisees are highly entrepreneurial. Earlier in the chapter I noted the difference between creativity and innovation. Therein lies the potential for our strange bedfellows to sleep peacefully. 

Creativity is the process of defining new problems, while innovation is applying new solutions to an already identified problem. 

Let's say you want to buy a franchise. To do so requires comfort with the franchisor's creative, problem-defining decisions. You like what you see. You become a franchisee, and with the creative process already completed, you merely read the manual, become a robot, and live happily ever after. Interested? 

Of course not. And that's not how franchising works. While much creativity precedes the franchisee, there is still creative work to be done–like generating success, for example. 

Franchisors know from experience most good ideas come from their innovative franchisees. In my experience, both as a director of an international franchisor and as a franchisee, at least 90 percent of the important marketing, financial, and operational innovations come from the franchisee. Although the franchisor created the concept, the entrepreneurial partner is still the primary idea source, the innovator. Highly innovative operators are a godsend for franchisors. Their contribution to the system's success is significant. 

Franchisees aren't robots. The opportunities to create success are as plentiful within a franchised business as in a non-franchised business. In some cases the opportunities to have impact are even greater, as innovations can be adopted throughout the system. A franchising concept, like other businesses, ultimately thrives in proportion to the talent it's able to attract.