Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Concepts, Contexts and Commercialisation provides readers with an accessible and readable introduction to the various dimensions of entrepreneurship and market innovation. It has a clear structure that is easy for the reader to follow and it focuses on enterprising behaviour. The text contains: * case studies and ‘pause and reflect’ situations for the entrepreneur to deliberate on the information they have available before making their decision. This helps to emphasise the point that there are few simple and straightforward decisions closely reflecting decisions in ‘real life’. * integrative personal development activities that provide a basis for readers to reflect on the learning of the chapters and develop a personal development strategy to increase their ability to become more entrepreneurial and improve their ability to manage market innovation. * an accompanying website giving students and lecturers access to additional resources in order to explore the subject further. A full set of powerpoint slides plus exercises is included, plus suggestions for the use in class of the case studies and other illustrations. Students can access further learning resources to build up their knowledge of innovation situations using the hotlinks to useful websites that will add further depth and bring up to date the case studies and illustrations. Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Concepts, Contexts and Commercialisation shows: * how to understand and acquire the entrepreneur’s skills, attitudes and knowledge * the techniques needed to generate new business and create a new organisation * how to become more innovative, self reliant, and opportunistic. * the learning and decision-making processes of entrepreneurs

Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Concepts, Contexts and Commercialisation provides readers with an accessible and readable introduction to the various dimensions of entrepreneurship and market innovation. It has a clear structure that is easy for the reader to follow and it focuses on enterprising behaviour. The text contains: * case studies and ‘pause and reflect’ situations for the entrepreneur to deliberate on the information they have available before making their decision. This helps to emphasise the point that there are few simple and straightforward decisions closely reflecting decisions in ‘real life’. * integrative personal development activities that provide a basis for readers to reflect on the learning of the chapters and develop a personal development strategy to increase their ability to become more entrepreneurial and improve their ability to manage market innovation. * an accompanying website giving students and lecturers access to additional resources in order to explore the subject further. A full set of powerpoint slides plus exercises is included, plus suggestions for the use in class of the case studies and other illustrations. Students can access further learning resources to build up their knowledge of innovation situations using the hotlinks to useful websites that will add further depth and bring up to date the case studies and illustrations. Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Concepts, Contexts and Commercialisation shows: * how to understand and acquire the entrepreneur’s skills, attitudes and knowledge * the techniques needed to generate new business and create a new organisation * how to become more innovative, self reliant, and opportunistic. * the learning and decision-making processes of entrepreneurs

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

A sweeping global history of entrepreneurial innovation Whether hailed as heroes or cast as threats to social order, entrepreneurs—and their innovations—have had an enormous influence on the growth and prosperity of nations. The Invention of Enterprise gathers together, for the first time, leading economic historians to explore the entrepreneur's role in society from antiquity to the present. Addressing social and institutional influences from a historical context, each chapter examines entrepreneurship during a particular period and in an important geographic location. The book chronicles the sweeping history of enterprise in Mesopotamia and Neo-Babylon; carries the reader through the Islamic Middle East; offers insights into the entrepreneurial history of China, Japan, and Colonial India; and describes the crucial role of the entrepreneur in innovative activity in Europe and the United States, from the medieval period to today. In considering the critical contributions of entrepreneurship, the authors discuss why entrepreneurial activities are not always productive and may even sabotage prosperity. They examine the institutions and restrictions that have enabled or impeded innovation, and the incentives for the adoption and dissemination of inventions. They also describe the wide variations in global entrepreneurial activity during different historical periods and the similarities in development, as well as entrepreneurship's role in economic growth. The book is filled with past examples and events that provide lessons for promoting and successfully pursuing contemporary entrepreneurship as a means of contributing to the welfare of society. The Invention of Enterprise lays out a definitive picture for all who seek an understanding of innovation's central place in our world.

Publisher description

In Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Business Clusters, Panos Piperopoulos provides a comprehensive introduction to what entrepreneurship is all about, how and why entrepreneurs innovate and how innovation systems operate. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) constitute the backbone of most economies, so the author examines their characteristics and the crucial role played by the owners and entrepreneurs who innovate to ensure the survival and continued growth of their firms. He also includes the particular phenomena that arise where the entrepreneurs are either female or from ethnic groups, or where the context is that of a developing region or country. The importance of co-operative strategic alliances and networks between firms is discussed, along with how these strengthen SMEs' competitiveness. The concept of open innovation has been proposed as a new paradigm for the management of innovation and the author presents a hypothetical model for enhancing the competitiveness and performance of SMEs by properly utilizing employees' creative potential, emotional intelligence, tacit knowledge and innovative ideas. The contemporary model of business clusters, involving partnerships with competitors, agents, universities, research centres and local, regional and national governments is discussed. The ways, means and methods through which SMEs' competitiveness and innovation can be enhanced within business clusters is illustrated by cases that identify four types of SMEs, that behave differently and play different roles in the networks and clusters of which they form a part, but all of whose performance and competitiveness is a function of their position and role in the wider scheme of things.