Innovation and Entrepreneurship

A must read for entrepreneurs | Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter F. Drucker If you are looking to get knowledge on the basic principles of entrepreneurship, this book is where you should start. Peter Drucker explains in a very detailed way these 19 principals which cover everything that you should know about the business world. Throughout the entire book he makes use of many examples of successful companies to show their process to success, he also shows examples of companies that have failed and why this happened. The book starts by letting you know the the deep relationship between innovation and entrepreneurship, it even starts by using examples which make the entire book much easier to understand. The author explains how an entrepreneur isn't a person starting a small food business but, the person that starts a new food business that has a new process which satisfies the people's demand. The author uses as example one of the most famous restaurants today, Mcdonald's, which changed an entire food industry with an innovating new process called “fast food”. We see many examples like this one throughout the book to explain the different topics, it explains how a business has to evolve alongside with the generations in order to survive. In general it is a very good book for young dreamers that like to think outside the box and want to become successful in life. This is the first entrepreneur book a read and i am really satisfied. One of the best lessons i learned form one of the chapters of the book is the change in perception, basically that we should always see a cup half full and never half empty. I highly recommend this book a a start line because of its combination of simplicity, detail and real life examples.

Right off the bat, it is easy to be dismissive of this book because it was written in the 1980's. How can such an old book still be relevant in today's high tech world? It is important not to get caught up in this trap. The principles Peter Drucker's spells out in this book are deep and go to the very nature of modern American capitalism. The beauty of this well written book is that it establishes the intellectual boundaries of innovation and entrepreneurship. There are countless subsequent books that address the many details of innovation. Yet all of these books work within the boundaries Drucker established with this work This is a great book that is as relevant today as when it was written. Highly recommended!

This is a really good book. I think it is a must read if you are thinking of starting any business venture. The other book I would recommend to compliment this one is the E-Myth Revisited. The E-Myth provides the How. This book provides the What. This book can be a bit boring at times but the points are well made. If at all possible avoid the Audible version of this book as it leaves a lot to be desired. The audible version is poorly recorded and the narrators voice is a monotonous monotone with his voice tone jumping all over the place in certain sections. If I did not find the value I did in this book I would have definitely requested a refund since the Audible version made it an excruciating listen. I was also unable to download the format 4 audible version and Audible support was of no help. (Note: Format 4 was an option when I purchased the book)

The title of this book says it all and I am very happy the book is here to read. Being a business owner with constant innovation within the company, I found this book really helpful. Don't think entrepreneurs are innovative by nature, this is something you choose to do yourself. Drucker has put together a story that catches your imagination and encourages you to go and seek opportunities. As famous Hollywood director David Lynch ones put: "Creativity is out there and like an aquarium full of fish... you just have to catch one". And that's what this book is about. Apart from being a great read, the book encourages action and makes you pursue opportunities. It has helped me in building and growing my company. I think that stands for a good testimonial.

The other 5 star reviews on here said it well already, but I just wanted to add my appreciation for this book to the pile. This is a REALLY good book. I couldn't even put it down. I have loads of highlighting, bookmarks, and notes already in it (Kindle ed.) and I am definitely going to be re-reading this book more than a few times. Some of what he said reminded me of The E-Myth Revisited, but this book took the topic more seriously. Drucker wasn't messing around here or trying to be philosophical about things. This book was originally published in 1985 when I was only 1 year old, and it seems to me that the things he talked about then are still highly relevant today. Also, since the book was written, the types of things he predicted would happen largely DID happen (and are, still,) which only makes Drucker's ideas even more credible. Great great book. A must-read for the budding entrepreneur.

"Innovation and Entrepreneurship" is one of the standard works on innovation authored by the famous management guru Peter Drucker. At the time of this review, it is a bit dated as it was written in 1984. Some might argue the content of this book won't be obsolete, I'm not one of them. I feel that large part of the content of this book is obsolete, irrelevant or has been replaced by better work (such as the work from Clayton Christensen). Next to that, some parts of the book were amusing to me in a sense that I felt they were very wrong (I'll point them out). On the other hand, other parts of the book were really good. The book is very American though, quite nationalistic, and by making the mistake of calling Singapore a Chinese colony, Peter Drucker makes clear that he doesn't seem to be very aware of the rest of the world. The book consists of three parts: 1) Practice of Innovation, 2) Practice of Entrepreneurship, and 3) Strategies. I don't think the titles really reflect well on what is in the chapters though. The first part, containing 11 chapters, started of very dry and academic. But the main content of this part relates to the sources of innovation, or where to look for if you want to be innovative. Drucker identifies 7 places where to look for when you want to be more innovative. At first, I felt they were kinda obvious as they were things like The Unexpected, Process Need, etc. However, each of these sources has their own chapter and each of these sources is described fairly well with mostly good example. I say mostly good examples, because a couple of examples were used that made me wonder about the research that Drucker had done. I'll give two from a domain that I know well. First, Xerox was given as an innovative company and used quite often. Some of the management practices of Xerox were given as an example. I found this amusing as Xerox (with his Parc research lab) is often the example of the company that best ruined their own innovative opportunities with their management practices. In fact, there are several books written on the topic on how Xerox was NOT able to sell its own inventions due to its dysfunctional and traditional management practices (see "Fumbling the Future" or "Dealers of Lightning"). The second example is IBM. Drucker praises IBM for their ability to innovate (many many times) and uses the IBM PC as one of the best examples of that. Now it is true that IBM managed to created the PC and be a player in the micro-computer market, but in fact, the ruined their future in that market by letting Microsoft build their software. Drucker argues that IBM was innovative enough to recognize they need to not rely on mainframes, but in fact, they weren't innovative enough to realize they needed to focus on software. (see book: "Big Blues: The Unmaking of IBM") Now, these are just two cases that I'm very familiar with. Drucker uses other case studies also, but considering how wrong he was in these two case studies, it made me seriously doubt the research done in the others. Part 2 of the book covers management practices that different companies should (and shouldn't) adopt in order to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in their organizations. Drucker focuses on a lot of "professional management" which seems deeply rooted in making a strict separation between the management and the workers. Also, it sort-of underrates the actual work and glorifies management. Practices that he recommends are: Build a management team, proper financial management, a lot and a lot of analysis before taking any actions, separating the innovative parts from the non-innovative parts, adjusting rewarding to promote innovation. Similar actions can be found in more modern work on innovation (such as the earlier mentioned work of Clayton Christensen). Part two is organized around types of organization: medium size, service, new company. The last part discuses organizational strategies of entering new markets and covers 4 different strategies: 1) all in, 2) find new markets (roughly similar to the Innovators Dilemma) 3) Find a niche, and 4) Change the market by changing the product or perception of the product. Drucker explains each of these strategies and looks for the benefits and drawbacks of each of these. This part reads pretty well and, my only critique of this is that it is very deeply (like all of the book) rooted in the illusion that you can predict the future by enough analysis and planning. The last chapter of the book, the conclusion, Drucker changes his focus to society and government as a whole and makes mostly political statements about his perspective of the role of government in society (which I do not agree with) Still, I'll stick with 3 stars. The book didn't impress me much, but it wasn't bad either. Some parts, like making explicit the sources of innovation, were pretty good and useful to remember. Some part, like the above mentioned case studies made it fairly bad. Most of it feels much like more conservative management and organizational theories, which I hope will gradually become obsolete (see e.g. "Future of Management" by Hamel). I wouldn't recommend the book to anyone except people who want to read everything related to management and innovation or who have a historical perspective (as Druckers influence has been strong). Thus, just 3 stars.

I bought this book after a CEO friend from YPO & OPM recommended this book to me. I find this book great for companies needing innovation. Many times business revenues and profit stay flat because they kept doing the same thing year in year out without any innovation. The book focuses on 3 main things: I. Practice of innovation II. Practice of entrepreneurship III. Entrepreneurial strategies What i like about this book is talking about creative imitation and: The do's of innovation: 1. Purposeful, systematic innovation with analysis of opportunities 2. Conceptual & perceptual innovation 3. Simple innovation 4. Effective innovation start small 5. Successful innovation aims at leadership The don'ts of innovation: 1. Not to be too clever 2. Don't diversify, don't splinter, don't try to do too many things at once 3. Don't try to innovate for the future The 3 Conditions of innovation: 1. Innovation is work, it requires knowledge 2. To succeed, innovators need to built on their strengths 3. Innovation has to be close to the market & focus on the market, indeed market-driven Buy this book if you wish to have innovation in your company.

This is the classic work on commercialization of new ideas. Everything written over the ensuing 30 years is simply built from this foundation. This is a must read for anyone involved in creating new businesses. The lessons within do not go out of style. Some of the specific examples are now long in the tooth, but the insights and strategies are still relevant.