Resumo de Innovation And Entrepreneurship

A fascinating take on the economic future of America, this book shows how innovation and entrepreneurship complement each other. While an entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of low productivity to an area of high productivity and greater yield, entrepreneurs innovate, though they may not always invent.

Drucker believes that good entrepreneurship is usually market-focused and market-driven. He gives us a framework for identifying innovative opportunities. For example, unexpected successes or failures within an industry often challenge the management?s judgment. He says that few managers pay attention to hidden opportunities which lead to success, for example, the neglect of the animal market by the pharmaceutical companies. Today, livestock raising has become very important throughout the world, and the increasing demand for animal proteins has led to tremendous changes in knowledge, sophistication and management capacity of the world?s farmers. If companies start asking what basic changes are now appropriate for this organization in the way it defines its business, technology and markets, then the unexpected success is likely to open up the most rewarding and least risky of all innovative opportunities. Similarly, an unexpected product failure could be due to the fact that the assumptions, on which a product or service, its design or its marketing strategy was based, may no longer fit reality. Perhaps the customers changed their values and perceptions. They may be buying the same thing, but they are actually purchasing a very different value. May be what has traditionally been one market is spilling into segments, each demanding a different value proposition. Any change like this is an opportunity for innovation.

He also suggests that innovative opportunity exists where there is an internal incongruity, that is a discrepancy between what is and what ought to be. For example, the lack of profitability in a growing industry is an example of incongruity. Another example -- producers and suppliers almost always misconceive what the customer actually buys. They assume what represents value to them also represents value to the customer. Due to this wrong assumption, they concentrate on the wrong area. This incongruity between reality and behavior affords an opportunity to an innovator to exploit it.

Drucker says that market and industry structures are often quite brittle, and disintegrate very fast. This may be a disaster or a blessing in disguise for a company. If an industry grows significantly faster than the economy or population, or there is a convergence of technologies, then its structure will change drastically. When this happens, the industry leaders often neglected the fastest-growing segments, leaving the arena open for an innovator to exploit.
While process need, which is task-focused, is a great area of entrepreneurial innovation, Drucker also suggests demographics may provide opportunities. He says that demographic trends are the most unambiguous, e.g. the ageing of population in most parts of Europe and Japan will test the ingenuity of marketers.
Sometimes, there is a dissonance between reality and the perception of reality in an industry. This may offer innovative opportunities, according to Drucker.
Knowledge-based innovation has the longest lead time of all innovations, sometimes as long as 25 to 35 years. Such innovations are not based on one factor, but on the convergence of several different kinds of knowledge, not all of them scientific, or technological. For example, the computer required a scientific invention, the audion tube, a major mathematical discovery, the binary theorem, a new logic, the design concept of the punch card, and the concepts of program and feedback. Unlike other innovations that exploit a change that has already occurred, knowledge based innovation aims at creating a want. And no one can tell in advance how the user will respond. Therefore, it is very importantthat the knowledge-based innovator needs to learn and practice entrepreneurial management.
The author says that the entrepreneur is well advised to forego innovations based on bright ideas because such ideas are the riskiest and least successful source of innovative opportunities.
Other topics covered in "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" include Principles of innovation, the entrepreneurial business, practicing innovations, entrepreneurial judo and ecological niche.

This book, first published in 1985, was way ahead of the curve. It literally predicted the profound effects of the IT revolution, coined the concept of lifelong learning, and identified the pivotal role of sound managerial practices in entrepreneurship and the new venture. Those of us who are active participants in the 'New Economy' should sit up and take notice of this book However, though this book spells out the "what" of innovation,it does not talk about the "how" of innovation .

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