Entrepreneurial Seminar Notes

• The basics of entrepraneurship: sense of mission, customer/product vision, high speed inovation and self inspired behaviour.
• The inclination of my life has been to do things and make things which will give pleasure to people in new ways by doing that i please and satisfy myself.
• Walt Disney.
• Steve Jobs from apple computers said the mangers knew how to manage, but they couldn't do anything.
• Sense of mission: leaving footprints in the sand...
• be excited and love your business! this is very important.
• Fall in love with your business-George Tidball the founder of Keg Restaurants.
• " We as a nation need to create more entrepreneurs- "Rod Ross"
• Sense of mission: creating high purposes and high standards.
• Our durt as industrialists is to produce goods for the public and to enrich and make happier all those who use them."- Konosuke Matsushita
• Any good business plan requires these things:
• What do I like to do?
• What am I good at doing?
• What does the market need?
• what competitive posistion would i have?
• what capabilities and cash must I have?
• Its a matter of survival
• Its not a project
• Focus on customers.
• Focus on products
• The criteria that count.
• Picking a market/product winners:
• High competitive posistion with a low market need.
• High competitive posistion high market need.
• Low competitive posistion low market need.
• Low competitive posistion high market need.
• What went wrong?:
• 33% of the excellent companies are no longer in business.(62-84)
• 84% of the 100 biggest companies are no longer in business. (1900-2000)
• 70% of the fortune 500 are gone. (1955-2006)
• Bigger is not better.
• They started out entrepreneurial and became managerial.
• every business starts as entrepreneurial.
• Life Cycle of Organization
• Start up in business=strong
• high growth=strong
• once the decline starts it becomes managerial.
• and once the struggle for survival starts, it is also managerial.
• " The seven deadly sins."

-"Everything that can be invented, has been invented."-Charles Duell Director US patent officer-1899

1.  Im okay-your okay.

-This produce terminal inaction.
-We are not okay... we are never okay!
-Crisis...and a sense of urgency are necessary for organizations to grow.
-Lets be excellent... Carpe Diem.

    2. One best way
-Silence workers forever.
-Kills innovation.

    3.Out of touch with competitors and customers.
-Your next great idea comes from competitors and customers.

    4.Centralize Everything
-This is all about controlling things... is bigger actually better?
-When in doubt-decentralize.
-Branson; When he sold Virgin Records... it was made up of 50 different record companies with no more then 60 employees in each.

    5.Lab in the woods.(scientists take over)
-Idea of having an innovation team in the woods away from the hustle bustle businesses in order to create room for creativity.
-Best ideas come from the factory floor, lunch brainstorming with salesman and face to face meetings with unhappy customers.

    6. Marketing or Salesman takes over.
-Opposite then the Lab in the woods.
-Not product specialist... you need both a scientist(product specialist) and a sales man(customer specialist) working together.

    7. Senior Management Disconnected
- MBA syndrome... sit in corner office and make decisions... disconnect from factory floor and customers.
-Sears was the worlds largests retailer. Then it built the worlds tallest building in Chicago and lost connection to customers. In comes walmart.