Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
Innovation and Entrepreneurship
net/publication/275692000
CITATIONS READS
1,170 9,173
2 authors, including:
William Gartner
Babson College
166 PUBLICATIONS 25,368 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Uncertainty, luck and the illusion of foresight: A Wittgensteinian perspective View project
All content following this page was uploaded by William Gartner on 02 October 2018.
174
Tomatzky, et al., 1983). Given these definitions, If the corporation has become the central social
entiepreneurship (organization creation) is a institution of our age (Mason, 1986), it must also
solution to those situations which need organiz- be acknowledged that modern corporations are
ing, while innovation is a solution to those situa- increasingly evolving toward socioeconomic and
tions that need something new. From my per- sociopolitical networks that magnify the impact
spective, Drucker's book is primarily about inno- they have on all facets of social life. One result is
vation rather than entrepreneurship. larger, more complex, polycentric networks of
One might fault the book for its generalities organizations (Gerlach & Palmer, 1981) that defy
and for the lack of specific steps to take for entre- simple theoretical and empirical categorization.
preneurial action, but Drucker's writings have Analyzing such networks is impeded by their
always been guides rather than how-to manuals. size and complexity, and ironically, the variety
Drucker's contribution provides us with a new of scholarly techniques and perspectives that can
way to see entrepreneurship; it does not map be employed to study their structures, motiva-
out all the details. To see entrepreneurship as a tions, behavior, and effects.
practice provides us with a much wider horizon We are fortunate to have a new system of
for exploration of a territory that we are just inquiry that facilitates a higher degree of concep-
beginning to address. I think that Drucker sets us tual and empirical analysis. Kathryn Rogers'
off in the right direction. study of the coal industry is much more than an
examination of how a complex and threatened
References industry responded to major environmental
change. It is a conceptual and methodological
Drucker, P. (1985) The entrepreneurial mystique. Inc. 7(10), work of note, because the author has found a
34-58.
remarkably effective way to integrate multiple
Gartner, W. B. (1985) A conceptual framework for describing research perspectives and a variety of units of
the phenonmenon of new venture creation. Academy of
Management Review, 10, 696-706.
analysis into a coherent "social action" frame-
work. (This framework draws heavily from the
Kanter, R. M. (1983) The change masters. New York: Simon
works of Oharles Perrow, 1979, and French soci-
& Schuster.
ologist Lucien Karpik, 1978.)
Porter, M. E. (1980) Competitive strategy. New York: Free
Press. The basic problems addressed by Rogers are:
how to conceptualize the interorganizational rela-
Tomatzky,L. G., Eveland, J. D., Boyland, M. G., Hetzner,
W. A. , Johnson, E. C. , Roitman, D., & Schneider, J. (1983) tionships that occur in a rapidly changing, so-
The process of technological innovation: Reviewing the called turbulent setting, and how to explain or
literature. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation. causally model the behavior and structural ef-
Vesper, K. H. (1980) New venture sfra/egies. Englewood Cliffs, fects that accompany these relationships. Opera-
NI: Prentice-Hall. tionally, this problem is refined into three ques-
tions: (a) What kinds of new interorganizational
patterns occured in an industry facing rapid
U.S. Coal Goes Abroad: A Social Action change? (b) What explains such patterns in terms
Perspective on Interorganizational Net- of current interorganizational theory? and (c)
works, by Kathr/n S. Rogers. New York: What effects did the new patterns have on distri-
Praeger Publishers Division of Green- butions of power among industry (or network)
wood Press, Inc., 1986, 253 pp., $38.95, members, and what is socially significant about
this reorganization?
cloth.
The situation that Rogers selected to study was
Reviewed by James E. Post, School of Manage- the United States coal industry. From early 1980
ment, Boston University, Boston, MA. through the end of 1982, U.S. steam coal, used
175
View publication stats