Q#1) What is strategic entrepreneurship? What is corporate entrepreneurship?

Strategic entrepreneurship involves taking entrepreneurial actions using a strategic

perspective. In this process, the firm tries to find opportunities in its external environment that it
can exploit through innovations.
Corporate entrepreneurship deals with entrepreneurship and innovation that takes place in
established organizations.
Q#2) What is entrepreneurship, and what are entrepreneurial opportunities? Why are they
important aspects of the strategic management process?
Entrepreneurship is the process by which individuals, teams, or organizations identify and
pursue entrepreneurial opportunities without being immediately constrained by the resources
they currently control.
Entrepreneurial opportunities are conditions in which new goods or services can satisfy a need
in the market.
The essence of entrepreneurship is to identify and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities—that is,
opportunities others do not see or for which they do not recognize the commercial potential—and
manage risks appropriately as they arise. As a process, entrepreneurship results in the “creative
destruction” of existing products (goods or services) or methods of producing them and replaces
them with new products and production methods.
Q#3) What are invention, innovation, and imitation? How are these concepts interrelated?
Invention is the act of creating or developing a new product or process.
Innovation is a process used to create a commercial product from an invention.
Imitation is the adoption of a similar innovation by different firms.
Innovation follows invention19 in that invention brings something new into being while
innovation brings something new into use. Accordingly, technical criteria are used to determine
the success of an invention whereas commercial criteria are used to determine the success of an
innovation. Imitation usually leads to product standardization, and imitative products often are
offered at lower prices but without as many features.
Q#4) What is an entrepreneur, and what is an entrepreneurial mind-set?
Entrepreneurial mind-set values uncertainty in markets and seeks to continuously identify
opportunities in those markets that can be pursued through innovation. Those without an
entrepreneurial mind-set tend to view opportunities to innovate as threats.

Q#5) What is international entrepreneurship? Why is it important?

International entrepreneurship is a process in which firms creatively discover and exploit
opportunities that are outside their domestic markets.
A key reason that firms choose to engage in international entrepreneurship is that, in general,
doing so enhances their performance. Nonetheless, those leading firms generally understand that
taking entrepreneurial actions in markets outside the firm’s home setting is challenging and not
without risks, including risks of unstable foreign currencies, market inefficiencies, insufficient
infrastructures to support businesses, and limitations on market size. Thus, the decision to engage
in international entrepreneurship needs to be a product of careful analysis.
Q#6) How do firms develop innovations internally?
Efforts in firms’ research and development (R&D) function are one primary source of internal
innovations. Through effective R&D, firms are able to generate patentable processes and goods
that are innovative in nature. Increasingly, successful R&D results from integrating the skills
available in the global workforce. Thus, the ability to have a competitive advantage based on
innovation is more likely to accrue to firms capable of integrating the talent of human capital
from countries around the world.
Q#7) How do firms use cooperative strategies to innovate and to have access to innovative
capabilities?
Alliances with other firms can contribute to innovations in several ways. First, they provide
information on new business opportunities and the innovations that might be developed to
exploit them. In other instances, firms use cooperative strategies to align what they believe are
complementary assets with the potential to lead to future innovations. Compared to other
approaches to innovation, combining complementary assets through alliances has the potential to
more frequently result in “breakthrough” innovations.
Q#8) How does a firm acquire other companies to increase the number of innovations it
produces and improve its capability to innovate?
Firms sometimes acquire companies to gain access to their innovations and to their innovative
capabilities. One reason companies do this is that capital markets value growth; acquisitions
provide a means to rapidly extend one or more product lines and increase the firm’s revenues. In
spite of this fact, a firm should have a strategic rationale for a decision to acquire a company.
Typically, the rationale is to gain ownership of an acquired company’s innovations and access to
its innovative capabilities.
Q#9) How does strategic entrepreneurship help firms create value?
Entrepreneurial ventures and younger firms often are more effective at identifying opportunities
than are larger established companies. As a consequence, entrepreneurial ventures often produce
more breakthrough innovations than do larger, more established organizations. Entrepreneurial
ventures’ strategic flexibility and willingness to take risks, at least partially, account for their
ability to identify opportunities and then develop breakthrough innovations. Yet, because these
innovations are often quite novel, they are also risky. Thus, they sometimes fail which frequently
means that the new venture fails because such firms have little slack. Alternatively, larger, well-
established firms often have more resources and capabilities to manage their resources for the
purpose of exploiting identified opportunities, but these efforts by large firms generally result in
more incremental than breakthrough innovations.