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The Entrepreneurial Business 159

measurement, or at least judgment, of entrepreneurial and innovative
performance into the controls of the business.
1. The first step builds into each innovative project feedback from
results to expectations. This indicates the quality and reliability of
both our innovative plans and our innovative efforts.
Research managers long ago learned to ask at the beginning of any
research project: “What results do we expect from this project? When
do we expect those results? When do we appraise the progress of the
project so that we have control?” They have also learned to check
whether their expectations are borne out by the actual course of events.
This shows them whether they are tending to be too optimistic or too
pessimistic, whether they expect results too soon or are willing to wait
too long, whether they are inclined either to overestimate the impact
of a successfully concluded research project or to underestimate it.
And this in turn enables them to correct said tendencies, and to iden-
tify both the areas in which they do well and the ones in which they
tend to do poorly. Such feedback is, of course, needed for all innova-
tive efforts, not merely for technical research and development.
The first aim is to find out what we are doing well, for one can
always go ahead and do more of the same, even if we usually do not
have the slightest idea why we are doing well in a given area. Next,
one finds out the limitations on one’s strengths: for instance, a ten-
dency either to underestimate the amount of time needed or to over-
estimate it; or a tendency to overestimate the amount of research
required in a given area while underestimating the resources required
for developing the results of research into a product or a process. Or
one finds a tendency, very common and very damaging, to slow down
marketing or promotion efforts for the new venture just when it is
about to take off.
One of the most successful of the world’s major banks attributes
its achievements to the feedback it builds into all new efforts, whether
it is going into a new market such as South Korea, into equipment
leasing, or into issuing credit cards. By building feedback from
results to expectations for all new endeavors, the bank and its top
management have also learned what they can expect from new ven-
tures: How soon a new effort can be expected to produce results and
when it should be supported by greater efforts and greater resources.
Such feedback is needed for all innovative efforts, the development
and introduction of a new safety program, say, or a new compensation
plan. What are the first indications that the new effort is likely to get