Corporate Entrepreneurship
Top Managers and New Business Creation

This study reveals why some organisations excel at fostering entrepreneurship leading to new business growth.

Vijay Sathe (Author), Peter F. Drucker (Foreword by)

9780521531979, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 February 2007

408 pages, 16 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.598 kg

'Corporate Entrepreneurship is essential reading for practitioners, researchers, and MBA students interested in new business creation. We have a rare opportunity to learn from 'what went right' as well as 'what went wrong' in the real world. We also learn from the real-life stories and direct quotations of top managers at large corporations as well as the writings of academic giants of leading business schools around the world. Most importantly, we learn from the author's insights into 'how to do' as well as 'how to see' the new business creation process. Without new business creation there is no future - for corporations as well as for our society.' Hirotaka Takeuchi, Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy Hitotsubashi University, Japan, and co-author of Can Japan Compete?

How do large corporations encourage their senior managers to become more entrepreneurial? This is a key question which is seldom addressed in mainstream entrepreneurship studies. Professor Sathe has written this study based on hundreds of hours of interviews with senior managers to help understand why some organizations and some top managers are better than others in fostering entrepreneurship leading to successful new business growth. Corporate Entrepreneurship explores the real world of top managers in a systematic and comprehensive way, examining business realities, the management culture, the corporate philosophy, the organizational politics, the personalities and the personal agendas of the people at the top. The book offers both a theory of corporate entrepreneurship and practical advice on how to manage it better. An interesting and valuable contribution to the literature on strategic management, this is a book that will appeal to graduate students, researchers and reflective practitioners.

List of figures
List of tables
Foreword
Preface
List of abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Why a consistent emphasis and approach for new business creation is beneficial but difficult to achieve
Part I. The Business Environment: 3. The external business environment
4. The internal business environment
Part II. The Management Culture: 5. Shared beliefs about rewards, risks, opportunities and rule-bending
6. Shared beliefs about control and learning
Part III. The Corporate Executives: 7. The bigger-is-better corporate philosophy
8. The small-is-beautiful corporate philosophy
9. New business creation challenges for corporate executives
10. Guidance and coaching by the DGM's boss and support and challenge by the controllers
Part IV. The Division General Manager: 11. The DGM's personal assets
12. The DGM's motivation and strategy for new business creation
13. Building corporate support for new business creation
14. Leading the division for new business creation
Part V. The Division and Its Top Management Team: 15. The identification and pursuit of new business opportunities
16. Other new business creation challenges for the division
17. The division's organization, competence and collaboration for new business creation
18. The effectiveness of the division's top management team
Part IV. Putting it All Together: 19. How the five major influences interact to drive new business creation
20. Managing ten critical issues in new business creation
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Organizational theory & behaviour [KJU], Business & management [KJ], Labour economics [KCF], Social, group or collective psychology [JMH]