How To Infuse Your Organization With Entrepreneurial Energy

This month brought the release of the new book, Achieving Longevity: How Great Firms Prosper Through Entrepreneurial Thinking, by Jim Dewald.

"I wrote this book because I am concerned that businesses in general, and business leaders in particular, have lost touch with the all-important entrepreneurial spirit that drove growth and prosperity in the past," says Dewald.

Jim Dewald

Dewald also believes that today's business leaders put too much emphasis on efficiency and commoditization rather than innovation.

"The long-term survival of a firm depends on its ability to engage corporate entrepreneurship to adapt to changing markets, technologies, and/or social-cultural factors," adds Dewald.

In his book, Dewald explores for the reader three distinct questions:

1. What is driving the renewed interest in entrepreneurship -- specifically, corporate entrepreneurship? Are we entering a new era in which corporate entrepreneurship will become essential, even for short-term success?
2. How can existing business firms best prepare themselves to be entrepreneurial?
3. What are the pitfalls or barriers, and how can firms and managers best prepare for these unexpected concerns?

You'll also learn about:

• the changing (or not so much changing) economic environment and the role of strategy and entrepreneurship in understanding firm longevity and firm failure.
• true strategic entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking and how to apply both to  your decision making.
• the framework, tools and culture necessary to foster entrepreneurial thinking.

Dewald shares this quote from Donald Kuratko and David Audretsch:

"A strategy at its essence, attempts to capture where the firm wants to go and how it plans to get there. When entrepreneurship is introduced to strategy, the possibilities regarding where the firm can go, how fast, and how it gets there are greatly enhanced."

Dewald is Dean of the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary.

Thank you to the book's publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.