Innovation and Entrepreneurship

How can management be developed to create the greatest wealth for society as a whole? This is the question Peter Drucker sets out to answer in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. A brilliant, mould-breaking attack on management orthodoxy it is one of Drucker’s most important books, offering an excellent overview of some of his main ideas. He argues that what defines an entrepreneur is their attitude to change: ‘the entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity’. To exploit change, according to Drucker, is to innovate.　 Stressing the importance of low-tech entrepreneurship, the challenge of balancing technological possibilities with limited resources, and the organisation as a learning organism, he concludes with a vision of an entrepreneurial society where individuals increasingly take responsibility for their own learning and careers.

With a new foreword by Joseph Maciariello

Table of Contents

Foreword. Preface. Introduction: The Entrepreneurial Economy Part 1: The Practice of Innovation 1. Systematic Entrepreneurship 2. Purposeful Innovation and the Seven Sources for Innovative Opportunity 3. Source: The Unexpected 4. Source: Incongruities 5. Source: Process Need 6. Source: Industry and Market Structures 7. Source: Demographics 8. Source: Changes in Perception 9. Source: New Knowledge 10. The Bright Idea 11. Principles of Innovation Part 2: The Practice of Entrepreneurship 12. Entrepreneurial Management 13. The Entrepreneurial Business 14. Entrepreneurship in the service Institution 15. The New Venture Part 3: Entrepreneurial Strategies 16. 'Fustest with the Mostest' 17. 'Hit Them Where They Ain't' 18. Ecological Niches 19. Changing Values and Characteristics. Conclusion: The Entrepreneurial Society. Suggested Readings. Index