Corporate Entrepreneurship Top Managers and New Business Creation

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.

How do large corporations encourage their senior managers to become entrepreneurial? Professor Sathe's study is based on interviews with senior managers to understand why some organizations excel at fostering a culture of entrepreneurship leading to new business growth. An interesting and valuable contribution to the literature on strategic management.

Vijay Sathe is Professor of Management in the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, California. He is the author of Controller Involvement in Management (1982), Culture and Related Corporate Realities (1985) and co-author of Organization (1992).