How Entrepreneurial Firms Prosper while Larger Firms Crumble
Many firms are facing great difficulty surviving the declining financial markets in Fall 2008. As larger firms take drastic measures to control and cut costs while forecasting declining revenue, entrepreneurial firms view the same marketplace in a more positive light. What separate these two types of firms is their differing levels of entrepreneurial intensity. An entrepreneurial grid positions firms upon two dimensions: Frequency of Entrepreneurship and Degree of Entrepreneurship (innovativeness, risk taking, and proactiveness). Just as managers select the placement of their firm on market dimensions such as quality and price, firms need to make a strategic position choice on where they wish their firm to be placed as related to entrepreneurial intensity. The firms listed in a recent article from BusinessWeek magazine titled “The World’s Most Innovative Companies” portrays a higher level of entrepreneurial efforts on both dimensions; firms that would be labeled as revolutionary on the entrepreneurial grid. It would be expected that as consumers expect new and improved products and services to emerge from innovative markets, firms labeled as periodic/incremental would have difficulties in sustaining continual growth. Additionally, firms labeled as continuous or incremental, dynamic, and periodic or discontinuous on the grid would be expected to have moderate success.