Page 21 - (DK) The Business Book

START SMALL, THINK BIG 19

Once a company is established, the second step of employing struggle to make the necessary
the challenge shifts: the objective people who are neither family nor changes; some try and fail, while
now is to maintain sales and grow previously known friends. This is others decide to remain small.
in the short- and long-term. the start of a move from entrepreneur
to leader, and it requires a new set Finding a balance
Adapting to survive of skills, as new demands are placed Determining how fast to grow is,
Long-term business survival on the business founders. Where therefore, a balance of the founder’s
depends upon the company once energy, ideas, and passion skills and desires. But in order to
constantly reinventing and were enough, evolving businesses survive, the idea must be unique
adapting itself in order to remain require the development of formal enough to define its own niche, and
ahead of the competition. In systems, procedures, and processes. the individual or group behind it
dynamic markets, which are In short, they require management. must demonstrate entrepreneurial
growing and evolving all the time, Founders must develop delegation, spirit. They need the flexibility to
the idea on which the company communication, and coordination adapt the idea—and themselves—
was founded may become irrelevant skills, or they must employ people as business and market pressures
over time, and rivals will almost who have them. demand. Luck will play a part, but
certainly copy it. The ecosystem As Larry Greiner described in it is the balance of these factors
in which a business operates is his 1972 paper, “Evolution and that determines whether a small
rarely, if ever, static. Corporations Revolution as Organizations Grow”, start-up becomes a giant. ■
exist in these ecosystems as living as a business grows, the demands
organisms that must adapt to on it change. The Greiner Curve is
survive. In their 2013 book, a graphic that shows how the initial
Reinventing Giants, Bill Fischer, stages of growth rely on individual
Umberto Lago, and Fang Liu noted initiative, and that evolving ad-hoc
that the Chinese home appliances business practice into sustainable When you have to prove
company Haier had reinvented and successful growth can only be the value of your ideas by
itself at least three times in the achieved by experienced people persuading other people to
past 30 years. In contrast, Kodak, and rigorous systems. Professional pay for them, it clears out an
a US giant of the 20th century, was management, as opposed to awful lot of woolly thinking.
slow to react to the rise of digital entrepreneurial spirit, becomes Tim O’Reilly
photography, and went bankrupt. essential to business evolution.
Irish entrepreneur (1954–)
Moreover, just as the enterprise Some leaders, such as Bill Gates
must adapt, so too must the owner. and Steve Jobs, for example, are
Most businesses start small, and able to make the transition from
remain small. Few entrepreneurs entrepreneurial founder to corporate
are willing or know how to take leader. Many others, however,