The Boardroom Entrepreneur [Paperback]

‘Stop staring out of the window, get a copy of The Boardroom Entrepreneur and change the world!’

Understands the needs of bright employees and of the people who lead them.

If you’re kicking your heels in a large organization, read this book and start stirring things up.

Speaks a lot of common sense in a well structured way.

The new book from the authors of the bestselling Beermat Entrepreneur

Clear-headed, practical, profound.

Entrepreneurs are the masters of change in the modern business environment: visionary, flexible, innovative. Large, established organizations look ponderous in comparison - but they need to change too, now more than ever. Can they learn from entrepreneurs? Or is the culture clash just too great? Mike Southon and Chris West, authors of the bestselling The Beermat Entrepreneur, believe that established institutions can harness the entrepreneurial passions and skills of their people. In this book, they show how. They do not claim it's easy. Many pitfalls and dangers await the intrepid 'intrapreneur' and his or her boss - but this book will reveal how these can be overcome, and the goal of a vibrant, innovative and motivated organization achieved.'I recommend this entertaining and thoughtful book to all management eager to make a difference to their companies and to the world around them'Sir John Rose, CEO, Rolls Royce'This is how to do corporate renewal in a clear practical and pragmatic way - essential reading for CEO's who want to make a lasting difference'John Bates, Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at London Business School (20040624)

Large businesses are often told to ‘be more entrepreneurial’ – but what does this mean, in practice? Throw out all existing culture and start again with 34,000 new business ideas? Clearly not. Set up huge, cumbersome ‘Venture Boards’ to mull over business plans and kill most of them off? There seems little point. So what does ‘be more entrepreneurial’ mean – or is it just another piece of empty rhetoric, to which the correct reaction is to nod eagerly in agreement then get on with what needs doing exactly as before?

Our first book, The Beermat Entrepreneur, was a distillation of many years’ work with real, entrepreneurial start-ups. Over that time we worked out a methodology for creating and building businesses successfully – the traps to avoid; the stuff you need to get right. In The Boardroom Entrepreneur we map this knowledge onto the existing business.

Over the years we have had many contacts with large businesses, and often found ‘frustrated entrepreneurs’ within them. After Beermat came out, we started formally consulting for large businesses, government departments and SMEs on how they could best use the talents of these people. The results were almost always illuminating: good ideas, and (more important) people determined to see those ideas through, cropped up in all parts of the organization.

The problem was never lack of ideas or lack of courage. It was always lack of knowledge and technique. How do I, the ‘intrapreneur’, set about turning my idea into a business? How do I, the manager, let this happen in a way that doesn’t scupper existing, successful organizational processes and culture? How do we all respond to that call to ‘be more entrepreneurial’?

The answers, we believe, are in The Boardroom Entrepreneur.

We hope you enjoy reading our new book, and that you enjoy even more putting what it says into practice. Good luck!

Mike Southon and Chris West

Mike Southon is a serially successful entrepreneur. He co-founded a consultancy in 1984, and sold it five years later to what is now Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. He is an active independent consultant, and has been a keynote speaker at conferences all over the world for Microsoft, IBM, Novell, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and many others. Chris West is a writer and journalist. He also works in PR and Marketing, and is currently involved in his own start-up enterprise. (20040624)