Innovation and Entrepreneurship
There is no doubt that high tech, whether in the form of computers or telecommunication, robots on the factory floor or office automation, biogenetics or bioengineering, is of immeasurable qualitative importance. (page 4)
Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit change as an opportunity for a different business or a different service. (19)
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity. (28)
Systematic innovation therefore consists in the purposeful and organized search for changes, and in the systematic analysis of the opportunities such changes might offer for economic or social innovation. (35)
Management must look at every unexpected success with the questions 1) What would it mean to us if we exploited it ? 2) Where could it lead us ? 3) What would we have to do to convert it into an opportunity ? And 4) How do we go about it ? (45)
Opportunity is the source of innovation. (69)
Systematic innovation begins with the analysis of the opportunities. (134)
Innovation is both conceptual and perceptual. (135)
An innovation, to be effective, has to be simple and it has to be focused. It should do only one thing, otherwise, it confuses. If it is not simple, it won't work. (135)
Everything new runs into trouble; if complicated, it cannot be repaired or fixed. (135)
Effective innovations start small. (135)
Innovations have to be handled by ordinary human beings. (136)
Don't try to do too many things at once. (136)
Don't try to innovate for the future. Innovate for the present. (137)
Innovation is work. It requires knowledge. (138)
To succeed, innovators must build on their strengths. (138)
Innovation is an effect in economy and society, a change in the behavior of customers, of teachers, of farmers, of eye surgeons - of people in general. (138)
Today's businesses, especially the large ones, simly will not survive in this period of rapid change and innovation unless they acquire entrepreneurial competence. (144)
Focusing managerial vision on opportunity. (155)
Policies, practices, and measurements make posible entrepreneurship and innovation. (161)
We need to encourage habits of flexibility, of continuous learning, and of acceptance of change as normal and as opportunity - for institutions as well as for individuals. (260)
In an entrepreneurial society individuals face a tremendous challenge, a challenge they need to exploit as an opportunity : the need for continuous learning and relearning. ( 263)
The correct assumption is that what individuals have learned by age twenty-one will begin to become obsolete five to ten years later and will have to be replaced - or at least refurbished - by new learning, new skills, new knowledge. (264)
The assumption from now on has to be that individuals on their own will have to find, determine, and develop a number of "careers" during their working lives. (264)