The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty

Traditionally, one would assume that a book titled The Entrepreneurial Mindset is reserved specifically and strictly for entrepreneurs; however, this text expands what would normally be referred to as a career choice to a way of thinking, working and managing. Unlike many business or business strategy books, this one offers a useful and actionable list of methods anyone can use to become a habitual entrepreneur, providing a new and efficient way to look at issues, ranging from those applying to enterprise to small business. The Entrepreneurial Mindset forces its readers to seek and track new opportunity, show discipline and focus, only pursue the best ideas, value idea execution and fully, effectively utilize their network.Among the many action plans present in this text, the most valuable and applicable across the board is that of monitoring your own behavior as an entrepreneurial leader by using climate-setting practices and orchestrating practices. “Your behavior as an entrepreneurial leader impacts the search of opportunity in your own organization.” As a manager, to create an environment in which everyone is looking for new opportunity, one must also be practicing this themselves by dedicating a large amount of their own time to creation of new business models while also crafting the way their team maps out new opportunities. The practices of climate-setting and orchestrating, are essentially strategy-specific ways of rolling up one’s sleeves and being an example of the work that is expected. This segment truly shows the importance of doing so.Another standout action plan from The Entrepreneurial Mindset is that of quizzing, as leaders must learn to never stop asking questions and challenging barriers. To better understand the consumer, this text advises to ask the questions of who, what, what else, when, where and how. This portrays the idea that creators can never know enough about the consumer, as more information will only make the product more successful. It goes further to usefully outline effective practices on creating a bountiful list of high-potential opportunities, resegmenting the current product market, finding new ways to differentiate the business from competitors, facilitating team breakthroughs and much more.While the many ideas, best practices and action plans discussed in The Entrepreneurial Mindset do transcend time, industry and field, the authors should consider creating a second edition of this text to maintain relevancy. The case studies featured, including problems faced by Enron and Amazon are interesting; however, they aren’t current. This fallback leaves them irrelevant and not relatable to current business students or young people entering the world of business and strategy. In this proposed new edition, it would be useful to include cases on current business issues depicting companies like Amazon, Apple, Snapchat and other new, cutting edge companies. Including relevant issues and new technologies while also cutting down the length of this book, to make its points faster and more clearly, could make it fresh and relevant to those seeking advice today.To conclude, while the advice in this book is most obviously relevant to those in new product development and project management, if one looks deeper, these best practices can be utilized across the board to create a challenging and effective work environment. More than ever, those in business are experiencing an ever-changing marketplace full of possibilities, which can cause apprehension. This book encourages its readers to both see these challenges and to dive right in to face them head on. Armed with the strategies, action plans and best practices outlined in The Entrepreneurial Mindset, the landscape of business strategy becomes a little less daunting. This book comes highly recommended.

This book has 5 star potential, but needs an update to achieve it. Written nearly 15 years ago, the book takes the reader step by step through a framing process for developing a masterful entrepreneurial strategy - from idea generation, assessment, prioritization, resourcing and analysis. Filled with actionable steps at the end of each well written chapter, the book's biggest downfall is that it lacks a more actionable framework of tools - but the questions are all there to be asked. The need for a bit more modern set of approaches in light of Enron ( a cited positive example), the mortgage crisis and technological advances would bring this almost five star read right back up there. Regardless of that nit, this is a great book for the budding entrepreneur to dig into and use as a framework for business plan and strategy development.

I would rank this alongside of Peter Drucker's classic "Innovation & Entrepreneurship (published 1985 but sill relevant). This book "The Entrepreneurial Mindset" is a blueprint for building entrepreneurial organizations (if anyone should care about such things any longer as I do). But it's not about buzz words or creating novelty for the sake of novelty (where does Apple go from here now that everyone has an iMac/iPad/iPhone?). 13 chapters sequentially covering the what & why of the need in organization's today, through framing the challenge and so on through to the most important job of leadership and when strategy is discovery. Also included are pertinent questions, comprehensive notes, and a detailed bibliography citing sources. What are you waiting for?

First off, you have to cast aside the idea that the word “entrepreneur” is only referring to those at the helm of startups and new business ventures, and instead borrow from the old French definition: “one who undertakes or manages”. The ideas presented in this book actually lend themselves very well to application in established firms. In fact, many of the examples in the text are drawn from old industries (manufacturing, insurance, etc.). So, keeping that in mind, what you have here is a very simple, fungible set of tools to quickly explore and define new opportunities in both existing and new businesses.The authors focus on training the reader to become what they call a “habitual entrepreneur”; a person who seeks out only the best opportunities with discipline and focus, without bogging themselves down with too many commitments or burning cycles on ideas that are not ready for prime-time. The concept of the Entrepreneurial Frame will quickly show the cutoff when an idea is not worth the effort, and the Opportunity Register will teach you how to inventory those ideas in an organized fashion, to bring out again when the market or customer trends have matured enough for it to be of high value.Once those tools have been handed to you, the real work of the book begins:McGrath and MacMillan take the reader through a number of exercises dealing with attribute mapping to illustrate how well a given product or service maps to the customers’ needs, quickly distilling complex characteristics into simple ideas that can be understood. Then, it is on to differentiating products/services with quizzing methods and analysis of the consumption chain; followed, as all the chapters are, with action steps than can be applied immediately to your business case.Beyond the activities to identify potential new products or markets, are methods to select which projects are most likely to reward you with substantial revenues and which projects should be set aside. The book provides tips on how best to assemble opportunities for your organization to capitalize on investment opportunities, as well as determine and implement an entry strategy into new or existing market arenas.At its heart, this is a technical handbook for reducing (not removing) the uncertainty around new business ideas. McGrath and MacMillan mention in the beginning of the text, that a successful entrepreneur does not wait until all is certain; they capitalize by being “roughly right” and then getting on with it. This is a book that will help you to clearly recognize and define the opportunities around you, understand the competition you face, and the customers you intend to serve; and then do just that - get on with it!

This is an excellent book especially for those who want to exploit business opportunities in a competitive terrain. It also features practical but innovative strategies of growing existing business. The book outlines how to record opportunities, how to choose which ones to pursue, how to analyse and deal with competition etc and introduces intriguing concepts such as opportunity set, real options reasoning etc. It's worth every penny

This is an excellent book full of ideas and practical toll with which to "build blockbuster products' develop competences and set out into new and difficult product and service ventures with confidence.It is well structured and comes armed with many examples taken from the autors own experience. It is not an academic book although it is wriiten by two people who are academics now. Ian Macmillan has had a wealth of experience before moving to Wharton

I was privileged to attend a lecture on this topic by Rita McGrath during my Advanced Leadership Programme at Nottingham University Business School - UK.This book delivers great content value, I am using it a bit like a bible refering to it as often as I need in business.

クリステンセンの「ジョブ理論」のP85にも紹介されている思考ツールである「仮説指向計画法」の解説書。「戦略を成功させるには、どの仮説を真実だと証明しなければならないか?」を問う。15年前に出版された本だが、その内容は色あせない。デザイン思考やCSV経営などに関わる人々に読んで欲しい。

現在，大企業の中でベンチャー組織を任されている人はかなりの数に登るはず．そのような人たちのために系統的に「起業の方法論」を説いたものが本書．逆財務諸表の考え方は，ベンチャのみならず既存の事業にも応用できる面白い考え方です．花王のフロッピーディスク事業を例に新事業をどう設計したかというエピソードは大変参考になります．花王自身はその後，黒字事業にもかかわらず撤退したことを知った上で読むと，さらに深く考える機会となるでしょう．しかしリアルオプションに中途半端に触れているため，論旨の流れが乱れているのが難．最近はビジネススクールでも企業内ベンチャの講座を設けて起業方法論の試行錯誤を始めています．IMDのNew Venture Boosterなどは参考になるでしょう．