the new entrepreneurial age

Awakening the Spirit of Enterprise in

People, Companies, and Countries

THE NEW

ENTREPRENEURIAL AGE

Larry C. Farrell’s

―The conduct of successful

business merely consists in

doing things in a very simple

way, doing them regularly,

and never neglecting to do

them.‖

William Hesketh Lever

Founder, Lever Brothers (Unilever)

THE LIFE CYCLE OF ALL

ORGANIZATIONS

Entrepreneurial Managerial

Start-up

High Growth Decline

Survival

DRIVERS OF ENTREP BOOM

• Jobs and prosperity

• Global marketplace

• Huge niche markets

• Start-up capital

• Ultimate meritocracy

• Working for big business

ENTREP’S PROTOTYPE

• Average age: 35-45 years old

• Work experience: 10 years and above in a

large company

• Educational background: average education

and I.Q.

• Psychological profile: normal

• Goal: to pursue his own, personal sense of

mission

FUNDAMENTAL PRACTICES OF THE

WORLD’S GREAT ENTREPRENEURS

• Sense of mission

• Customer/Product vision

• High speed innovation

• Self-inspired behavior

• The entrepreneurial way to deliver

product/market winners.

• Leaving footprints in the sand.

• Keeping the sense of mission alive as you

grow.

• The “HOW” and “WHAT”

• Corporate culture –

• How to go about doing it?

• Corporate strategy –

• What to do?

• What products for what customers?

SENSE OF MISSION

“Tremendously important to me was

the feeling that we were doing something

that had a significance far beyond

building a company or what the

financial rewards could be. I was

convinced we were doing something that

had tremendous importance in the

world.”

SENSE OF MISSION

Benjamin B. Tregoe, Ph.D.

Co-Founder, Kepner-Tregoe, Inc.

SENSE OF MISSION

weak strategy

strong culture

(stupid plan

strong values)

strong strategy

strong culture

(smart plan

strong values)

weak strategy

weak culture

(stupid plan

weak values)

strong strategy

weak culture

(smart plan

weak values)

―HOW‖

Corporate

Culture

(Business

Values)

―WHY‖ Corporate Strategy

(Business Plans)

• What products or services do I have a

passion for?

• What product/services could I provide?

• What am I really good at doing?

• What’s the scope of products and services I

can and will provide?

• What’s the criteria for picking winners?

• Will our products and services be better

and cheaper than our competitors?

• Will they be only better?

• Will they be at least cheaper?

SENSE OF MISSION

• What customers/markets might I pursue?

• What is the market need for products or

services based on the things I like to do or

am good at doing?

• What un-met, or poorly met, needs do I see

in the market—which require products or

services I might like to do or might be

good at doing?

• Am I really clear on what markets I will

and won’t tackle?

• What’s the criteria for choosing?

• What will they really pay for?

SENSE OF MISSION

• What capabilities and cash must I have?

• What operating capabilities and resources

are required to make, sell, and service our

products and customers?

• Can I really make the product or deliver

the service?

• Can I really sell it?

• Can I service it?

• And can I pay for all this?

• Where will the cash come from and where

will it go?

SENSE OF MISSION

• What competitive position would I have?

• What would my competitive position be,

for each possibility, compared to the best

providers of similar products and services

to the market?

SENSE OF MISSION

―Leprosy

Business‖

Small Market Need

High Comp. Position

―Heart Disease

Business‖

Big Market Need

High Comp. Position

―Polio

Business‖

Small Market Need

Low Comp. Position

―Headache Business‖

Big Market Need

Low Comp. Position

SENSE OF MISSION

PICKING WINNERS

Co

mp

eti

tiv

e

Po

sit

ion

Market Need

small big

high

low

• Creating Entrepreneurial Strategy

• It’s a matter of survival

• Don’t make it a big, complicated project

• Stay focused on customers

• Stay focused on products

• Know the criteria that count

SENSE OF MISSION

• Creating Entrepreneurial Business Values

• Competitive advantage

• Personal commitment

• Behavior, not words, at the top

• It’s not a big, new project

• Few and simple

• Never compromised

SENSE OF MISSION

• Keeping them alive

• Your daily behavior – senior management

• The rituals and practices you follow

• What you reward and what you penalize

• Entrepreneurial mission:

• High purpose

• High standards

• Profound and simple

SENSE OF MISSION

SENSE OF MISSION

“Our duty as industrialists is to

provide conveniences for the public,

and to enrich and make happier all

those who use them.”

Konosuke Matsushita

Founder, Matsushita Electric

CUSTOMER/PRODUCT VISION

• My customer, my product, my self-respect.

• Who are my customers?

• What are my products?

• What must I do to satisfy my customers?

• The entrepreneurial passion to produce continuous

growth.

• Producing things exactly the way customers need

them and want them.


• “The computer is the most remarkable

tool we’ve ever built…but the most

important thing is to get them in the

hands of as many people as possible.”

• “Managing is the easy part. Inventing

the world’s next great product is what’s

hard.” Steve Jobs

Founder

Apple Computer, NeXT, Pixar


• Creating a Passion for Customers and Products

• Loving the Customer

• Knowing Your Product

• Responding Immediately

• Being Courteous and Competent

• Keeping Current Customers Forever

• Loving the Product

• Knowing Your Customer

• Feeling Old-Fashioned Pride

• Making it Better than the Next Guy

• Making it Faster than the Next Guy


SCIENTIST ENTREPRENEUR

BUREAUCRAT SALESMAN

Product

Focus

Customer Focus

DISNEY MAGIC

LOVING THE CUSTOMER

AND

LOVING THE PRODUCT


• Re-instill it in every employee

• Growing the old-fashioned way

• Current products to current customers

• New products to current customers

• Current products to new customers

• New products to new customers

HIGH-SPEED INNOVATION

• The entrepreneur’s secret weapon to beat the

competition.

• When your life depends on it.

• Fostering high-speed innovation across the

company


• The Two Golden Rules:

• The Necessity to Invent

• Feeling the heat of necessity

• Create crisis and urgency

• Do something, anything, better each day

• The Freedom to Act

• Freeing the genius of the average worker

• Action with customers, products, and inside

your organization

• Battling bureaucracy


• The Seven Deadly Sins against HIS

• I’m OK, You’re OK

• One best way – silencing workers forever

• Out of touch with customers and competitors

• Centralized everything

• Lab in the woods

• Marketing takes over

• Senior management dis-connected

SELF-INSPIRED BEHAVIOR

• The power of loving what you do and getting very

good at doing it.

• Love what you do and get very good at doing it.

• Making self-inspired behavior the organization

standard


=

Hate it

and

Good at it

(Low commitment &

High performance)

Love it

and

Good at it

(High commitment &

High performance)

Hate it

and

Bad at it

(Low commitment &

Low performance)

Love it

and

Bad at it

(High commitment &

Low performance)

High

High

Low

Low Low

High

High

Low

P

E

R

F

O

R

M

A

N

C

E

COMMITMENT

ENTREPRENEURIAL BEHAVIOR

Working Smarter

And Harder

High Performance and

High Commitment


• ENTREPRENEURIAL COMMITMENT: ―I LOVE

WHAT I DO‖

• Love what you do

• Give autonomy, demand accountability

• Share fortune and misfortune

• Lead by example, never compromise


• ENTREPRENEURIAL PERFORMANCE: ―I’M

GOOD AT DOING IT‖

• Get better at what you do

• Winning at quality, quantity, speed and cost

• Save your best for customers and products

• Lead by example, never compromise


• ENTREPRENEURIAL CONSEQUENCES

• Workers as Owners

• Intrapreneurship

• Entrepreneurial Performance System

(EPS)

• Consequence determine behavior

• Everyone has a business to run

• Customers give consequences – bosses

give feedback

• The company and the workers have a

shared destiny

WHAT’S REALLY REQUIRED TO

BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR?

• A bit of money

• A bit of knowledge

• An entrepreneur-friendly culture

• Keep it small

• Keep it personal

• Keep it honest

• Keep it simple

• Start over with the basics

CREATE THE ENTREPRENEURIAL

ORGANIZATION – RECOMMENDED

ACTIONS

• A bit of money

• Kill your ―culture of budgets‖ and replace

it with a ―culture of progress.‖ compare

progress against yourself and your best

competitors.

• Institute incentive compensation or ―pay

for performance‖ for everyone – yesterday!

• Institute employee ownership – yesterday!

At a minimum, aim for a critical mass of

your workers.



ACTIONS

• A bit of knowledge

• Provide communication and training on why you want the company to become more ―entrepreneurial,‖ what entrepreneurial behavior really is, and how every employee can use it in their job, day in and day out.

• Provide communication and training programs to improve specific, high impact operational activities. Most product and customer training would qualify.



ACTIONS

• An entrepreneur-friendly culture

• CEO and senior management commitment is critical.

• Replace old hierarchical, functional organization structure with customer/product driven business units.

• Reinforce the new structure with a flexible loose/tight organizational approach.

• Learn to communicate and implement through ―flexible networks of employees‖ versus the bureaucracy of a multi-layered management hierarchy.

AN ENTREPRENEURIAL

ECONOMY

• The Government’s Most Important Job

• Population control

• Fight inflation

• Make people rich

• Don’t get hung up on ideology

• Create and honor the entrepreneurs

• K.T. Li (father of the Taiwan economic miracle)

Minister of Economic Affairs

Minister of Finance

Republic of China on Taiwan

AN ENTREPRENEURIAL

ECONOMY

DOING IT JUST FOR THE MONEY – A RECIPE

FOR DISASTER!

―People who just want to start a company

because it’s a good way to become wealthy –

well, they almost always fail.‖

Ed Penhoet

Co-founder

Chiron Corporation

Atty. Vivian T. Dabu

Ateneo-Regis, AGSB Clark

[email protected]

This presentation was an inspired and abridged version of the book of

Larry C. Farrell, The New Entrepreneurial Age, Awakening the Spirit of

Enterprise in People, Companies, and Countries, 2011 edition, published

by Brick Tower Press.