Management Decision

The essence of entrepreneurial success

Richard L. Osborne
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 4 MANAGEMENT DECISION 33,7
The essence of entrepreneurial
success
Richard L. Osborne
What are the essential elements of entrepreneurial success?
The essence of entrepreneurial success
Large company or small. Start-up or existing firm. The
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essence of entrepreneurial success is found in the
strategies that link the company and its environment.
New and/or different links between the firm and its
environment are usually the product of an inclination to
test – and sometimes ignore – conventional wisdom about
how things are done, as well as an entrepreneurial
mindset that empowers the execution of untried ideas.
Dell Computer grew to $1.7 billion of revenues in just ten
years by defying the conventional wisdom that personal
computers must be seen (and explained) to be sold. Dell
substituted a new paradigm: if the price is dramatically
lower, customers will purchase personal computers
through a catalogue sight unseen and, moreover, will take
responsibility for learning to operate them without the
face-to-face instruction offered by competitors’ store-
based distribution method. This entrepreneurial strategy
achieved competitive advantage by linking customer and
products by means of a new application of an existing
channel of marketing/distribution.
Similarly, Calyx and Corolla Flower Company was
started to sell flowers through a paradigm-shattering use
of catalogues mailed directly to customers. The founding
entrepreneur, Ruth Owades, negotiated arrangements
with growers to package flowers at the point of harvest
and ship them by way of Federal Express directly to
customer residences or businesses. This novel strategy
challenged the entrenched belief that customers would
only purchase flowers through the established channel of
local florist shops. The company demonstrated not only
that flowers could be delivered undamaged but also that
the average time between harvest and customer delivery
(thus freshness) could be reduced by seven to ten days
through the new direct order mail delivery method.
Entrepreneurial strategies are not a twentieth-century
phenomenon. When Marco Polo established trade routes
Management Decision, Vol. 33 No. 7, 1995, pp. 4-9 © MCB University Press
Limited, 0025-1747
to the Far East, he was demonstrating the risk-taking
behaviour we associate with entrepreneurship. The
match he found between his skills and the environmental
opportunity (demand for goods by consumers previously
separated by geography and culture) is a perfect
illustration of an entrepreneurial strategy. The example
of Marco Polo is particularly apt to the contemporary
understanding of entrepreneurship, with its increasingly
global scope.
A key condition of entrepreneurial strategies is the
capacity to assume risk by the person or persons who
have the prerogative to take action – either the owner or a
manager or group of managers whose emotional
investment and delegated authority enable them to place
the firm’s resources at risk. Dell, Owades and even Polo
did just that when they launched their new businesses.
How to devise an entrepreneurial strategy for the
start-up venture
For the determined entrepreneur, successful start-up
strategies emerge from a process made up of the
following, often overlapping, steps:
● Studying the environment to identify unmet
marketplace needs.
● Developing a product or service to respond to
needs and marketplace trends.
● Creating a marketing and financial plan to animate
the selected product/service concept.
● Sorting out the suitable level of personal and
business risk that corresponds to the
entrepreneur’s capacity and potential marketplace
rewards.
● Marshalling the requisite resources to launch the
business.
Identify unmet marketplace needs
Unmet marketplace needs are the principal inspiration of
entrepreneurial strategy. While novel, breakthrough
ideas sometimes lead to huge rewards, the majority of
entrepreneurs launch businesses that modify an existing

product or service in a way that satisfies a previously
unmet need.
The identification of unmet marketplace needs depends
on a thorough understanding of the economic, social,
demographic, technological and political trends that
reshape the environment. A new business concept that
responds to emerging demographic and social trends
enhances the likelihood of success. The growing number
of elderly people creates the potential for entrepreneurial
strategies that serve their particular needs. The focus on
personal health and fitness gives rise to a range of
strategic initiatives, from personal exercise trainers to
weight loss clinics. Anti-smoking laws and related public
policy information campaigns have spawned products
and services to help people abandon cigarettes. The rapid
computerization of the international workplace created
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the need to train workers to operate continuously
enhanced information systems.
Select the product or service
The selection of the product or service which is to be the
basis of the entrepreneurial strategy is a matter of
integrating the unmet need opportunity discovered in the
environmental scan and the entrepreneur’s preparation.
A classic entrepreneurial strategy
Innovatively linking the firm’s products or services to its
environment is a classic entrepreneurial strategy.
Microsoft, the computer software giant, was created by
the entrepreneurial impulse of its founder, Bill Gates. His
signal innovation was to build products that were
designed into the new products of its customers (notably
IBM), thereby erecting huge barriers to the entry of
would-be competitors. The computer software business
was then and is now savagely competitive. By
reinterpreting product innovation to include the emerging
needs of his target customers’ product development
cycles, Gates created a powerful, difficult to defeat
linkage with his firm’s customers, leaving behind many of
his competitors whose focus was exclusively geared to
product novelty.
Federal Express, the private postal service invented by
Fred Smith, who was 28 years old at the time, further
demonstrates the power of entrepreneurial strategy. The
customer need he identified was speed, a need not
satisfied by the bureaucratic performance of many
government-managed postal services. Fred Smith’s
daring entrepreneurial response was to create a private
air force to deliver packages twice to ten times faster than
governmental competitors. Federal Express, at
considerable risk, created a service capability that
anticipated the vast number of customers willing to pay
premium prices to achieve speed and reliability of
communication.
THE ESSENCE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS 5
The customer is not the only party whose needs can be
met by an innovative strategy. Take the case of two
companies – a major oil company and a provider of
underground water remediation services – which started
a joint venture to provide a mutually desired service. The
international oil company was incurring substantial
expenditures to clean up the contamination of ground
water caused by leaks from underground tanks at its
local petrol stations. The water remediation firm was a
minor supplier of this service to the oil company. A joint
venture was created between the two to perform all of the
oil firm’s remediation at substantially reduced cost and to
provide remediation service to other oil companies
located in regions previously unserved by the ground-
water clean-up firm. The oil company invested the capital
required for geographic expansion and benefited from
both lower remediation costs and a share of the joint
venture profits created by the dramatic expansion of the
environmental clean-up firm’s geographic penetration.
Each joint venture partner maintained its separate
ownership and operations. However, they were able to
create new wealth by combining resources for purposes
of the joint venture.
A similar example is the alliance of two regional dairies to
achieve the economies of scale needed to contend with the
lower manufacturing costs of large national competitors.
Such large-scale companies are able to devote entire
processing plants to single or similar products, resulting in
very high equipment utilization rates and lower unit
production costs. These lower costs enable the national
dairy to price products below those of the typical regional
dairy. To counter this competitive advantage, the two
regional dairies established a co-operative production
scheme. One dairy produced all the fluid milk products and
the other all the ice-cream products. Utilization rates
increased and unit costs declined. Both dairies maintained
their separate product identity and distribution; however,
their lower product costs enabled them to match their
larger competitors’ pricing. The result was a service to
both firms – increased sales and competitive vitality
demonstrating, in this instance, the potential of
entrepreneurial strategy to maintain a competitive parity.
As some of these examples suggest, start-up entrepreneurs
must know, in considerable depth, not only how their
industries work but also what their capabilities are.
The case of an industrial sealant start-up company
exemplifies this. The company subcontracts the sealant
manufacturing, employs a telemarketing firm to reach
potential customers and utilizes a packaging company to
warehouse and ship its products. Accounting and billing
are also outsourced to another firm. This entrepreneur,
based on an assessment of the limits of his/her personal
capabilities, has created a virtual corporation that
performs all the needed business functions without the
substantial capital investment that would be required to
manufacture and distribute his/her products within the
 6 MANAGEMENT DECISION 33,7
start-up company. The entrepreneur’s contribution is
product formulation, orchestrating the linkages between
the various vendors that perform the essential functions,
and the strategic cunning to appropriate the resources
and expertise of other firms to achieve the goals of his/her
own.
Many entrepreneurial strategies are identified while the
eventual entrepreneur is working in a firm owned by
others. The product design engineer imagines a product
that more fully serves a customer need, drawing on
his/her knowledge of the technology and marketplace of
his employer’s business. The fast-food restaurant
manager plans to establish home delivery service based
on a central telephone ordering despatch that will
arrange, pick up and deliver food from any of the
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customer’s favourite area restaurants. Whether the
concept is a grand innovation or an adaptive idea to serve
a customer need, the entrepreneur’s likelihood of success
is enhanced if he/she has been trained in businesses with
technologies that are relevant to the intended
entrepreneurial strategy. Start-ups are risky business. In
the USA, 1,000 companies each day close their doors,
often after existing for fewer than five years. In pursuing
an entrepreneurial strategy, the entrepreneur’s skills,
training and relevant prior experience are determinative
influences on the viability of the new venture.
Create a marketing and financial plan
Once the opportunity has been identified, the
entrepreneur must create a marketing and financial plan
to capitalize on the idea, gain control over the requisite
resources, and establish a structure that is appropriate.
While, according to studies, only about one third of start-
up entrepreneurs create a comprehensive marketing and
financial plan, those who do increase the probability of
venture success. The planning process can refine the
creative concept and strengthen the entrepreneur’s
capacity to execute. The plan should include the
following elements:
● Resolve – the desired outcomes and objectives to be
achieved in the marketplace during the initial
years, focusing on year one; this section describes
the firm’s implementing strategy – what is to be
done and how it is to be achieved.
● Resources – the human, financial, production and
other capabilities needed to launch and sustain the
business.
● Response – elements of the strategy that deflect
competitor reactions (e.g. Microsoft’s penetration
of customer product design).
● Results – a quantitative financial measurement of
the start-up strategy’s viability: a projection of
revenues, cost structure, and cash flow.
The former fast-food manager who starts a small multi-
restaurant delivery service faces many of the same issues
as Fred Smith of Federal Express, except as they relate to
scale. Both will be served by a simple but disciplined
start-up planning process. But the dimensions of the plan
will be geared to the complexity of the venture concept.
The most useful start-up plan will focus on a few key
success factors rather than a comprehensive discussion of
all the variables that may affect the firm. In the last
analysis, the planning process should facilitate rather
than delay the entrepreneurial impulse.
Select suitable level of risk
Successful entrepreneurs, contrary to the popular notion,
generally select risks that avoid huge gambles. They are
adept at calibrating the level of risk that matches
potential reward and their personal capacity to manage
uncertainty. Start-up entrepreneurs must honestly assess
their level of training and preparation, appetite for risk-
taking behaviour, and then realistically compare these
calculations with both the rewards and the risks
represented by the chosen entrepreneurial strategy.
Sorting out the suitable level of personal and business
risk is a key, often neglected, step in the new venture
process.
Marshal financial resources
The requisite financial resources will depend, of course,
on the nature of the proposed enterprise. The industrial
sealant entrepreneur who outsourced the business’s
major functions avoided the necessity of major initial
capital investment. Fred Smith, on the other hand, had to
raise $91 million (at age 28) to fund his revolutionary idea.
Finding sources of capital – whether they be personal
savings, loans or gifts from relatives, or banks, venture
capitalists, or governmental agencies – may require
considerable ingenuity and persistence. The entrepreneur
will need to weigh the options in terms of the cost of
money and pressures to share control and ownership. One
sobering fact stands out: the direct cause of most start-up
failures is inadequate capital (although underlying flaws
in the business concept and execution often contribute to
capital dissipation). In any event, the entrepreneurial
strategy can succeed only if initial and subsequently
generated capital is sufficient.
The quality of the original business concept, especially
its congruence with environmental opportunity, is what
distinguishes a start-up entrepreneurial strategy.
However, the entrepreneur’s capacity to assemble needed
resources and execute the venture plan is what ultimately
determines the success or failure of the venture.
Profile of an entrepreneur
While there are notable exceptions, entrepreneurs who
succeed often exhibit a characteristic profile. They

display a strong need for achievement. They are
comfortable with the consequences of their actions. Their
risk-taking behaviour seeks to avoid very high
probability of failure, regardless of rewards. Similarly,
they seek to avoid very low rewards even if success is
assured. They are goal-oriented and prefer measurable
tasks. While their ventures are often rewarded with
financial success, money is more of a measure than
motivator to the entrepreneur. Ego drive, high energy,
capacity to deal with ambiguity, and the need for
independent action are frequent characteristics
associated with entrepreneurial behaviour. The would-be
entrepreneur should measure himself or herself against
this profile before undertaking the personal and
professional risks of a start-up venture.
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How to foster entrepreneurial strategies in established
businesses
Most of the cases related above are start-up firms driven
by their entrepreneurs’ conceptualization of an
evolutionary or revolutionary linkage to his or her
business environment. Start-up businesses like these,
unburdened by past practice and entrenched paradigms
about what works, are often the source of distinctive
entrepreneurial strategies.
Once the start-up has passed through the initial
entrepreneurial phase of development, rules develop
about its business practice which may block
entrepreneurial vision and the discovery of new
entrepreneurial strategies to sustain growth. The
reluctance to change existing practice can affect even the
most adventuresome entrepreneur as his/her business
matures.
Administrators in large-scale organizations in which
there is a tendency towards hierarchical decision
processes and centralized control systems face particular
challenges in spawning entrepreneurial strategies.
Instead of focusing on opportunities external to the firm,
such managers are often mired in internal issues of
structural, managerial, and resource limits that are
barriers to opportunistic action. The perceived need for
compatibility with existing strategic and operational
commitments narrows the range of opportunity. The
increasing susceptibility of managers in large-scale
companies to job loss creates an aversion to risk taking
that is incompatible with new, environmentally driven
strategies.
Companies that have escaped the bureaucratic morass of
organizational maturity tend to create conditions that
foster and reward entrepreneurial behaviour. Some
isolate units chartered to seek entrepreneurial strategies,
permitting the development of management structures
that value everyone’s ideas, regardless of rank. In these
entrepreneurial units successful risk taking is rewarded,
THE ESSENCE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS 7
mistakes are accepted as inevitable in creative processes,
and unit members control or are able to acquire the
resources essential to the pursuit of opportunities
discovered in the marketplace.
Other companies attempt to facilitate entrepreneurial
behaviour by reinventing the firm’s culture. Layers of
management are collapsed company-wide. Inter-
disciplinary teams are created linking market-focused
employees with technical product- or process-oriented
staff. Teams are empowered to appropriate resources.
Managers not only leverage existing enterprise strengths
and skills, they look also to acquiring talents or training
employees to develop capabilities that are necessary to
create and pursue entrepreneurial strategies. Such
reinvented cultures reward action and rely less on bloated
staffs. Data-driven analyses and fact-based decision
making are honoured; however, these practices are joined
by intuitive judgements. Sears Roebuck, the retailing
giant, shifted prerogative from corporate staff to line
managers in an effort to encourage action versus analysis.
Japanese automakers taught the world to value the ideas
of entry-level employees.
Reinvented cultures attempt to remove boundaries
between firm and environment. Customer attitudes and
ideas are regarded as extensions of the research and
development function. 3M, a diversified international
manufacturer of over 60,000 products, is a notable example
of a culture that links its technological expertise with
unmet customer needs, notwithstanding the large scale of
its operations. “Post-it”, the enormously successful note
paper that sticks, but does not permanently adhere to
almost all surfaces, was discovered by listening to a
company secretary’s unmet need. 3M conceptualized its
own employee need as a proxy for the thousands of
marketplace applications of the new product, insightfully
blurring the boundary between organization and its
external environment. Finally, the corporate entrepreneur,
like his/her start-up venture counterpart, values ideas no
matter where invented, focusing resources to their
exploitation regardless of source.
International opportunity
The rapid collapse of nationalistically grounded
economic boundaries and emergence of market-driven
economies around the world are catalyst to new and
extended entrepreneurial strategies. As old paradigms of
conducting business between and within countries
change, new environmental opportunities proliferate.
Surging technology, advanced communication and
information systems are engines of global linkage
between entrepreneur and unmet customer needs. Never
before in history has the chance of adding economic value
to customer lives and organizations been so great.
Nevertheless, obstacles to the actualization of entre-
preneurial strategies must be overcome, particularly in
 8 MANAGEMENT DECISION 33,7
the short term. Would-be entrepreneurs who have been
nurtured in formerly centralized economic systems must
learn to cope with and select appropriate business and
personal risks. They will be aided by studying the profile
of successful entrepreneurs (see profile of an entrepreneur
above). They will learn from and adapt the methodologies
of entrepreneurial strategy. In the longer term, they are
likely to improve on the models which they initially
imitate. Regional and worldwide trade treaties
notwithstanding, the global entrepreneur will have to
contend with unevenly hospitable legal, governmental
and cultural practice.
The Asian entrepreneur who enters European or
American markets must adapt entrepreneurial strategies
to the local culture. His or her business plan must respect
differing environmental, public policy and private citizen
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values if it is to succeed. The local stage of technological
development must be compatible with the firm’s concept.
Standardization of product and component sizes, an
assumption in many advanced economies, may represent
a formidable obstacle to entrepreneurs in emerging
market economies. Marketing strategies and product
standards must consider the differences in the hundreds
of legal systems and thousands of national laws.
International entrepreneurial strategies may be
implemented through start-up companies or existing
firms. Bernard Tapie, the French entrepreneur who
created a billion dollar multinational enterprise by
acquiring underperforming companies, is an example of
the latter. Tapie looks for maturing businesses whose
original concept is no longer fully aligned with its
environmental opportunity, then attempts to revitalize
them (with sometimes uneven results) by adjusting or
reinventing the firm’s strategies to make them compatible
with changing marketplace trends and customer needs.
Essential elements
While the richness of opportunity will lead the
resourceful entrepreneur in diverse directions, the
essential elements of entrepreneurial strategies remain
the same. The entrepreneur must have the prerogative
and resources to initiate risk-bearing actions. The focus
must be on innovatively linking the firm’s business
concept with opportunities discovered in the environ-
ment:
● customers;
● competitors;
● technology;
● public policy;
● social trends and
● demographic patterns.
Satisfying existing and emerging unmet customer needs
will be the cornerstone of entrepreneurial strategies that
succeed. Everyone benefits in this process:
● customers, whose lifestyles and capacity to
perform productively are enhanced;
● employees of job-creating new and/or expanded
venture firms;
● entrepreneurs, who create and reinvest wealth for
themselves and others;
● economies that prosper;
● even displaced competitors, who realign their
approach and redeploy resources in response to
the dynamism unleashed by entrepreneurial
strategies.
Further reading
Bhide, A., “How entrepreneurs craft strategies that work”,
Harvard Business Review, Vol. 72 No. 2, March-April 1994,
pp. 150-61. Observations on the source of new business
opportunities, the planning process, and the basis of
competition.
Bird, B., Entrepreneurial Behaviour, Scott Foresman, Glenview,
IL, 1989. Comprehensive analysis of the various factors
which motivate the actions of entrepreneurs and influence
the strategies they employ.
Chandler, G. and Hanks, S., “Market attractiveness, resource
based capabilities, venture strategies, and venture
performance”, Journal of Business Venturing, Vol. 9 No. 4,
July 1994, pp. 331-47. Empirical study that attempts to
determine and measure the correlates of new venture
performance.
Greenfield, W., Developing New Ventures, Harper & Row, New
York, NY, 1989. Format for strategic planning, budgeting,
and determining the business objectives of a new venture.
Herron, L. and Sapienza, H., “The entrepreneur and the
initiation of new venture launch activities”,
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Vol. 17 No. 1, Fall
1992, pp. 49-55. A synthesis of models for venture initiation
based on prior research linked to the skills of the
entrepreneur.
Hisrich, R. and Peters, M., Entrepreneurship: Starting,
Developing and Managing a New Enterprise, 3rd ed.,
Richard D. Irwin, Homewood, IL, 1995. Textbook style
discussion of all aspects of entrepreneurship.
Hoffman, R. and Preble, J., “Franchising: selecting a strategy
for rapid growth”, Long Range Planning, Vol. 24 No. 4, 1991,
pp. 74-85. Framework for franchise strategy formulation
and implementation.
Kumar, C. and Wallett, T., “Entrepreneurship and competitive
strategy for the 1990s”, Journal of Small Business
Management, Vol. 29 No. 1, January 1991, pp. 94-9.
Observations on changes in the competitive, regulatory, and
international environments and the possible impact on new
venture creation.
Kuratko, D. and Hodgetts, R., Entrepreneurship: A
Contemporary Approach, The Dryden Press, Chicago, IL,
1989. Examines the importance of strategic planning for
emerging ventures and the approaches frequently used by
entrepreneurs.

McCann, J., “Patterns of growth, competitive technology, and
financial strategies in young ventures”, Journal of Business
Venturing, Vol. 6 No. 3, May 1991, pp. 189-208. Explains the
array of strategies a small, high-technology firm may use to
pursue rapid growth while defending a niche based on
technological competence.
Osborne, R., “Planning: the entrepreneurial ego at work”,
Business Horizons, Vol. 30 No. 1, January-February 1987,
pp. 20-4. Entrepreneurial planning practices.
Osborne, R., “The dark side of the entrepreneur”, Long Range
Planning, Vol. 24 No. 3, June 1991, pp. 26-31. Profile of the
successful entrepreneur.
Osborne, R., “Why entrepreneurs fail: how to avoid the traps”,
Management Decision, Vol. 31 No. 1, 1993, pp. 18-21.
Conceptualized reasons for entrepreneurial failure,
suggested guidelines to enhance prospects for successful
start-ups and acquisitions.
Downloaded by Ohio State University At 10:44 19 December 2014 (PT)
Ostgaard, T. and Birley, S., “Personal networks and firm
competitive strategy – a strategic or coincidental match?”,
Journal of Business Venturing, Vol. 9 No. 4, July 1994,
pp. 281-303. Identifies the network of the entrepreneur as his
or her most valuable resource and the determining factor in
selecting a new venture strategy.
Stevenson, H. and Gumpert, D., “The heart of entre-
preneurship”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 63 No. 2,
Richard L. Osborne is Executive Dean and Director, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve
University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
Application questions
(1) Are entrepreneurs strategists or opportunists?
(2) Can entrepreneurship be taught?
(3) Should entrepreneurial behaviour be encouraged in organizations? What is the good and bad news about
“intrapreneurs”?
THE ESSENCE OF ENTREPRENEURIAL SUCCESS 9
March-April 1985, pp. 85-94. Insight into entrepreneurial
strategies based on the resources of the entrepreneur, the
state of the external environment, and the appropriate
administrative structure for the venture.
Timmons, J., “New venture creation: models and
methodologies”, in Kent, C., Sexton, D. and Vesper, K. (Eds)
Encyclopedia of Entrepreneurship, Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, 1982. Overview of the strategies and tactics for
creating a successful new venture.
Treacy, M. and Wiersema, F., “Customer intimacy and other
value disciplines”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 71 No. 1,
January-February 1993, pp. 84-93. Explores new venture
strategies as redefining value in a market based on unmet
customer expectations then building a cohesive business
structure to deliver value.
Vesper, K., New Venture Mechanics, Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, 1993. Description of the steps in researching and
refining an idea for new business opportunities, developing
a new product, and organizing operations.
Zahra, S., “A conceptual model of entrepreneurship as firm
behaviour: a critique and extension”, Entrepreneurship
Theory and Practice, Vol. 17 No. 4, Summer 1993, pp. 5-21.
Extends the theories of entrepreneurial strategies and
behaviour to firms, then attempts to measure performance.
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