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Conclusion: The Entrepreneurial Society 255

and the integrating organ of our society of organizations, so innovation
and entrepreneurship have to become an integral life-sustaining activi-
ty in our organizations, our economy, our society.
This requires of executives in all institutions that they make inno-
vation and entrepreneurship a normal, ongoing, everyday activity, a
practice in their own work and in that of their organization. To pro-
vide concepts and tools for this task is the purpose of this book.

II

WHAT WILL NOT WORK

The first priority in talking about the public policies and governmental
measures needed in the entrepreneurial society is to define what will not
work—especially as the policies that will not work are so popular today.
“Planning” as the term is commonly understood is actually incom-
patible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Innovation does
indeed need to be purposeful and entrepreneurship has to be man-
aged. But innovation, almost by definition, has to be decentralized, ad
hoc, autonomous, specific, and micro-economic. It had better start
small, tentative, flexible. Indeed, the opportunities for innovation are
found, on the whole, only way down and close to events. They are not
to be found in the massive aggregates with which the planner deals of
necessity, but in the deviations therefrom—in the unexpected, in the
incongruity, in the difference between “The glass is half full” and
“The glass is half empty,” in the weak link in a process. By the time
the deviation becomes “statistically significant” and thereby visible
to the planner, it is too late. Innovative opportunities do not come
with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze.
It is popular today, especially in Europe, to believe that a country
can have “high-tech entrepreneurship” by itself. France, West
Germany, even England are basing national policies on this premise.
But it is a delusion. Indeed, a policy that promotes high tech and high
tech alone—and that otherwise is as hostile to entrepreneurship as
France, West Germany, and even England still are—will not even pro-
duce high tech. All it can come up with is another expensive flop,
another supersonic Concorde; a little gloire, oceans of red ink, but
neither jobs nor technological leadership.
High tech in the first place—and this is, of course, one of the major