Enterprise in Action: A Guide To Entrepreneurship

This welcome new guide to the world of entrepreneurship offers invaluable lessons for the student and the practical entrepreneur alike. For the student it breathes fresh life into the standard curriculum topics, analyzing them in the context of a wide range of current real–world examples. For business practitioners it shows how practical success is influenced by factors such as industry dynamics, entry barriers, reconfiguration, and core competence. This is a book especially useful for the MBA and professional market.  It takes the reader through a variety of examples, mainly from smaller and/or newer companies in Britain and the USA, but gives clear accounts of concepts and processes so that anyone can ‘come on board’. Above all it provides a plausible ‘action sequence’ played out through the 11 chapters, showing the positioning and behaviour likely to lead to success. Students will gain insights into key issues such as: What gives rise to entrepreneurial opportunity? How it is possible to exploit trends, and what are these trends? What is the role of innovation/originality? How do companies get started and become self–sustaining? What is ‘execution’, does it differ from implementation, and what is its role in business success? What do established SMEs (small and medium sized companies) do to survive in the middle term, and even across family generations? Enterprise in Action illuminates the dynamics of enterprise creation and the development of SMEs over time, shedding important light on ‘what seems to work’ and what favours success over the long term in a volatile business environment.

Acknowledgements ix 1 Change and Opportunity 1 2 Destination: Core Competence 19 3 A Natural History of Innovation 37 4 Shades of Originality 53 5 Biography and Capability 85 6 Niche Markets and Entry Barriers 117 7 Cruising Altitude 147 8 The Challenge of Inheritance 183 9 Opening the Box 213 10 Beyond the Box 239 References 247 Index 249

Peter Lawrence is Professor Emeritus, Loughborough University and visiting Professor at the University of Northampton.  He is MSc supervisor at the University of Birmingham.  He has published 26 books and has taught management and entrepreneurship in France, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, Israel and USA.  He is currently Le Brun Fellow in International Business, Northern State University, South Dakota, USA.  Professor Lawrence has built an international reputation through writing over 20 books about management in different national contexts. Invited to visit and speak in many countries, he is in demand as a consultant and teacher.