Page 167 - ENTREPRENEURSHIP Innovation and entrepreneurship

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160 THE PRACTICE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

into trouble and needs to be reconsidered? And what are the indica-
tions that enable us to say that this effort, even though it looks as if it
were headed for trouble, is actually doing all right, but also that it may
take more time than we originally anticipated?
2. The next step is to develop a systematic review of innovative
efforts all together. Every few years an entrepreneurial management
looks at all the innovative efforts of the business. Which ones should
receive more support at this stage and should be pushed? Which ones
have opened up new opportunities? Which ones, on the other hand,
are not doing what we expected them to do, and what action should
we take? Has the time come to abandon them, or, on the contrary, has
the time come to redouble our efforts—but with what expectations
and what deadline?
The top management people at one of the world’s largest and most
successful pharmaceutical companies sit down once a year to review
its innovative efforts. First, they review every new drug development,
asking: “Is this development going in the right direction and at the
right speed? Is it leading to something we want to put into our own
line, or is it going to be something that won’t fit our markets so we’d
better license it to another pharmaceutical manufacturer? Or ought
we perhaps abandon it?” And then the same people look at all the
other innovative efforts, especially in marketing, asking exactly the
same questions. Finally, they review, equally carefully, the innovative
performance of their major competitors. In terms of its research budg-
et and its total expenditures for innovation, this company ranks only
in the middle level. Its record as an innovator and entrepreneur is,
however, outstanding.
3. Finally, entrepreneurial management entails judging the com-
pany’s total innovative performance against the company’s innovative
objectives, against its performance and standing in the market, and
against its performance as a business all together.
Every five years, perhaps, top management sits down with its
associates in each major area and asks: “What have you con-
tributed to this company in the past five years that really made a
difference? And what do you plan to contribute in the next five
years?”
But are not innovative efforts by their nature intangible? How can
one measure them?
It is indeed true that there are some areas in which no one can, or
should, decide the degree of relative importance. Which is more signifi-