Re-Entrepreneuring: How Organizations Can Reignite Their Entrepreneurial Spirit

It is assumed that in the development of an organization, the time for entrepreneurial activity is right at the beginning. Once an organization is established, qualities that were virtues in the organization’s ante- and neo-natal stages becomes vices, and the entrepreneurial founders must cede control to professional managers who can nurture the fruits of their original vision efficiently.

The consequence of this assumption is that large, established organizations tend to be entrepreneur-free zones. Entrepreneurial thinking is tacitly discouraged because it can create novelty, and novelty is a threat to established organizations with large market shares. There is insufficient slack in a modern, lean organization for the entrepreneurial dialectic of speculation and experimentation.

This book will argue that organizations must no longer aspire to be oases of calm in the shifting sands of the global economy. They must adapt to and become one with the market, by reviving the entrepreneurial outlook of their founders.

It is an over-simplification to say that some people have the entrepreneur gene and some don t. We can all be entrepreneurs in an organization that fosters the entrepreneurial outlook. It has more to do with the ways of thinking encouraged by the culture than any inherent differences in talent or aptitude.

The central idea in this book is piecemeal ‘re-entrepreneuring’. The authors show, with the help of case studies, how the entrepreneurial approach can be applied to all organizations and at all levels, to create new value.