Entrepreneurship: Exploiting Market Discontinuities

Entrepreneurship  The process of uncovering and developing an opportunity to create value through innovation and seizing that opportunity without regard to either resources (human and capital) or the location of the entrepreneur—in a new or existing company (Churchill, 1992: 586).

Schumpeter (1934)  Status Quo  Creative Destruction (Innovation)  Entrepreneur as a bullet  Create new wheel

Critical Questions that need to be asked to create wealth generating activities.  Where and in what ways is change creating the potential for new rules and new space?  What is the potential for revolution inherent in the things that are changing right now, or have already changed?  What are the discontinuities we could exploit?  What aspect of what’s changing can we come to understand better than anyone else in our industry?  What’s the deep dynamic that will make our new business concept oh-so-relevant right now? (Hamel, 2000)

Recommended Reading Churchill, N.C Research issues in entrepreneurship. In Sexton, D.L. and Kasarda, J.D. (Eds.), The State of the Art of Entrepreneurship, PWS-KENT, Boston, MA: Hamel, Gary Leading the Revolution. Harvard Business School Press, Boston. Schumpeter, Joseph A The Theory of Economic Development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.) First published in German, 1912.