The Entrepreneurial School (Part One)Originators: Joseph A. Schumpeter, A.H. Cole & others
Idiom “Take us to your leader.”
Business Enterprise in its Social Setting (1959)
First Discipline
A.H. Cole was a student of entrepreneurialism and a leader of research into the topic at The Center of Entrepreneurial History at Harvard University until its closing in 1957-58. Mintzberg characterizes him as a rider of the elephant regardless of its girth or size. However as most discover young elephants have a tendancy to disregard instructions and often threaten to wade about and bask in the warm pools off of the chosen path.
First Discipline
A.H. Cole was a student of entrepreneurialism and a leader of research into the topic at The Center of Entrepreneurial History at Harvard University until its closing in 1957-58. Mintzberg characterizes him as a rider of the elephant regardless of its girth or size. However as most discover young elephants have a tendancy to disregard instructions and often threaten to wade about and bask in the warm pools off of the chosen path.
His text entitled, “Business Enterprise in its Social Setting” was published in 1959 and is indicative of current interests having abandoned the topic of theoretical entrepreneurial strategies as a good first edition signed copy was acquired at http://www.alibris.com/ for the grand total of two dollars and fifty cents with the inscription, “with thanks to a real professional – Arthur H. Cole (squiggle mark).” Such a preface to reading details the art of leadership rather than the prescriptive nature of good management in modern terms which would often appear to prefer a nice, neat set of guidelines and standards rather than an amorphous even personally inspiring message mirroring the art and artifice of entrepreneurial skills first brought to public attention by Joseph Schumpeter to define business behaviorism as beyond the calculations of profit and loss to a philosophical realm of survivalist slant, for example, how one keeps a company afloat on a sea of bubbling quicksand, how capitalist institutions manipulate and maintain structural elements of their economic strategies to the point of creating or destroying competitive advantages. Mintzberg highlights Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction as the underlying engine of capitalism and its engineer cast as the entrepreneur not only he who capitalizes but he who actually curdles the original idea.
Definition Difficulties
A.H. Cole himself illustrates that the very nature of a definitive description of what an entrepreneur actually is or should be described as being is so elusive and so antithetical to the practice of modern economics that a clear understanding is itself challenging the parameters of short-term and narrow outlooks especially his insistence that a historical perspective is not only necessary but naturally beneficial as often found in corporate cultures of the present and the past. In many corporate cases strategy remains the final assent of the chief executive, president or chairman of the board regardless of whether or not such characters embody the complexities of perspective of singular decision-making based on sound plural administration to ensure that the best possible ideas for future plans courses or options actually filter up to that actual decision maker. In many cases isolationism has only proven that independent decisions are not always the best ones and successful companies capitalize a diversity of opinions at times to prove that more plentiful frames of view are often more useful than one.
He goes on to note that a study of entrepreneurial history is not about determining a consensus on terms of effective entrepreneurialism which can easily cloak all cultures, times and societies with the same characteristics or currency of best practices. He comparatively highlights the process of self-generated policies and procedures embarked upon by entrepreneurs which quickly reveals that where one conquers another is vanquished dependent upon econometrical variables more easily understood to the present than the root sparks of vision which enabled and empowered them to come about in the first place. For such a tired old theorist he easily determines the challenges of innovation being the expense incurred and risk entailing change either in productive, service or managerial strengths which often paralyze and imperil companies of the present. For example, Cole details that political and legal limitations provide benefit and barriers to the entrepreneur in certain situations while also complicating factors of productivity and supply through additional capital considerations such as environmental standards and employee relations.
Stand Tall Young Man
His insistence that entrepreneurs stand in a world of business often on their own terms better explains perhaps the diminishment of interest especially in the west of entrepreneurial theories and studies as corporate structuralism of business has compartmentalized the terms of business so successfully that one is often preferred hammered, squeezed, cut and reduced to suit the molds and models of current favour rather than the elucidation and expression of new ones or individually determined ones. Pluralism assumes individualism to be some great chaos fraught with economic risk and an intellectual orientation on the topic which often distinguishes itself on presentation rather than substance, structure at the cost of irregularity, and conformity as opposed to uniqueness and is the exact track an entrepreneur may refine to redefine new bases of profit and reorient the market to his own illustrious heuristics.
His insistence that entrepreneurs stand in a world of business often on their own terms better explains perhaps the diminishment of interest especially in the west of entrepreneurial theories and studies as corporate structuralism of business has compartmentalized the terms of business so successfully that one is often preferred hammered, squeezed, cut and reduced to suit the molds and models of current favour rather than the elucidation and expression of new ones or individually determined ones. Pluralism assumes individualism to be some great chaos fraught with economic risk and an intellectual orientation on the topic which often distinguishes itself on presentation rather than substance, structure at the cost of irregularity, and conformity as opposed to uniqueness and is the exact track an entrepreneur may refine to redefine new bases of profit and reorient the market to his own illustrious heuristics.
While the topic remains hot Cole appears not to hold sway over corporate society today. However a quick review of the internet provides evidence of continued research in the topic however sometimes the best things in life cost two dollars and fifty cents.
Internet Articles of Interest
Small Business and Entrepreneurial Research: Meta-theories, Paradigms and Prejudices
Paul Grant, Lew Perren (Brighton Business School) University of Brighton
A Conceptual Framework for Describing the Phenomenon of New Venture CreationWB Gartner - The Academy of Management Review, 1985 - JSTOR
ON THE ROLE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN SOCIETY: JAMES KENDRICK
Team Leader, Policy Development and Research: Entrepreneurship and Small Business Office
(Industry Canada & Ph D Candidate HEC, Montreal, Canada)
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