Cambridge Business Association
Corporate Entrepreneurship
Book

Corporate Entrepreneurship

Building an Entrepreneurial Organisation

Paul Burns
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008
First Edition: 2005
Buy book or audiobook

Read or listen offline

Amazon Kindle
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Much of the business world’s enchantment with entrepreneurialism focuses on new start-up companies. Time to reboot. This textbook by professor Paul Burns explains how an established company can recapture the innovative magic of entrepreneurialism. getAbstract recommends this guide to combining the creativity, agility and innovation of an entrepreneurial start-up with the market power, reach and security of a big, established company. Burns covers many facets of the management tactics needed to bring an entrepreneur’s creative drive into the realm of the settled corporation. In this chunky manual, he draws on numerous examples from well-known companies such as Dell and Virgin Airways to put entrepreneurialism in an overall economic context, and he teaches managers how to propel their firms forward by being flexible, eager, and inventive.

Summary

The “Entrepreneurial Revolution”

A business revolution is underway – not just in how businesses operate but in how their leaders think. Actually, this entrepreneurial revolution has been in motion for several decades. Commentators often refer to entrepreneurship as a “slippery concept,” an asset that everyone wants but no one can define fully. People tend to confuse the term “entrepreneur” with “small-business” owner. Some people with smaller companies may be quite happy to have their firms reach a certain level, sufficient to supply a good living, and later to maintain that level. They are a valuable part of the overall economy, but they are not entrepreneurs – businesspeople who seek profit by taking risk and showing initiative. Entrepreneurial people and companies often concentrate on some form of innovation, whether in products (Dell), services (Virgin Airlines), prices (Walmart), marketing (McDonald’s), or a combination of these areas.

The New World of Entrepreneurship

Economic development efforts often focus on small companies as the likeliest source of new methods of wealth creation, innovation and jobs. Small businesses have room to learn by trial and...

About the Author

Paul Burns is professor of entrepreneurship and dean of the University of Bedfordshire’s school of business in the United Kingdom. He is a former visiting scholar at Harvard Business School.

Comment on this summary