Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation

CHAPTER 9

The Five Angles of Strategic Entrepreneurship

The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur.

George W. Bush (allegedly, to Prime Minister Tony Blair after an economic summit in France)

Of course, the word entrepreneur is French. According to the Complete Oxford Dictionary, it was first used to denote a director or manager of a public musical institution: ‘One who “gets up” entertainments, esp. musical performances.’ The origin is apt. Entrepreneurship, even in its now broader business sense, is the bridge between the art of innovation and a viable market. This chapter focusses on the seemingly contradictory entrepreneurial traits and capabilities which take innovation over this bridge.

In previous chapters, we have noted how creativity and innovation draw upon quite different, seemingly paradoxical, capabilities. The same is true of entrepreneurship. The two words that we believe best represent the essential dichotomy of the entrepreneurial challenge are also French in origin. They sit side by side in English and French dictionaries and, indeed, there are probably no more incongruous neighbours in our languages. We argue that the strategic entrepreneur (or entrepreneurial group) must be equally dilettante (pursuing something for its own sake and without serious study, amateur, non-expert, dabbling), and diligent (constant in application, persevering in endeavour, industrious, not idle, not negligent, not lazy).

As in other parts of this book, ...