Largely because of increasing competition, the management of

change and innovation is becoming more and more important to

survival and prosperity of organizations. Change is any alteration
in the status quo, while innovation is a new idea applied to
initiating or improving a process, product or service. Forces for
change can be external or internal. As the grow organizations tend
to go through four life cycles, or predictable stages of
development: entrepreneurial, collectivity, formalization and
control and elaboration of structure. Movement through (1) these
stages require changes in methods of operating, but these
changes may inhibit innovation unless managers plan and
encourage it. Failure to adapt to changing conditions may lead the
organizational termination through bankruptcy, voluntary
liquidation, and merger, acquisition, or takeover.
11 Although managers may (2) sometimes be forced to react to
unpredictable situations, effective managers attempt to plan for
major changes and innovations whenever possible. They tipically
follow a six-step process: perceibing (3) an opportunity of a
problem, diagnosing the situation and generating ideas,
presenting a proposal and adopting the changes, planning to
overcome resistance, implementing the change and monitoring
and evaluating the results. In planning to overcome resistance to
change, managers must understand why people resist change.
Major reasons are self-interest, misunderstanding and lack of
trust, different assessments, and low tolerance for change. (4)
Managers also must have knowledge of methods for overcoming
resistance to change. These include education and
communication, participation and involvement, facilitation and
support, negotiation and agreement, manipulation and cooptation, and explicit and implicit coercion. Force-field analysis is
helpful in understanding the driving forces and restraining forces
that account (5) for the status quo. It is frequently more effective
to try to reduce the restraining forces than to attempt to increase
the driving forces for change. (d) Intrapreneurship is growing in
importance in organizations, and intrapreneurs have certain

Did you know that most oil and gas wells drilled in the world were, and
are, done by small independent oil/gas companies? Yep, Its true, no
matter what the media or other persons of interest say otherwise.
These small independent companies were called Wild cat Operations.
(a) They were and still are the leading edge of drilling for that precious
oil and gas, which is so highly coveted. Let me take you back, and give
you some history on how and where this first came about in what is
Part 1 of a 2-part series.
Let me say there have always been seeps of oil, bubbling up from the
ground since the time the world was formed. Oil is mainly dead algae or
what geologists and chemists like to say, Lifeless Hydrocarbons,
compressed, pressurized and heated which turns into a sludge. Natural
Gas comes from oil that has been compressed and pressurized even
more. When I say pressurized, think of a piece of graphite, when you
take it and pressurized it, you get coal, if you pressurize it more, you get
a diamond. Oil and Gas are the same.
14 Now seeps have been all over the world, and most ancient
cultures have used it to make various things and weapons. But the real
start of how the oil boom began in the U.S., was Titusville,
Penssylvania on Oil Creek (which is actually called the Allegheny River
now). People would see a sheen of oil on the tops of the water, and
called it Rock Oil. A man by the name of Edwin Drake, drilled (actually
pounded) in the area, which started the flurry of the exploration of oil.
20 This laid waste to the Oil Boom of Texas. (b) A man by the name of
Anthony F. Lucas, who lead a drilling team, saw the salt dome known as
Spindletop. The area they were in was well known for oil seeps. When
the well has reached down to 1,139 ft, the pressurized gas and oil,
launched most of the drilling assembly into the air; gushing oil, gas and
water everywhere, which then coined the term of any well that gushed
out of the ground a Gusher. This started the Texas Oil Boom.
The picture above is the spindletop well, which had been gushing for
over 10 days.
These pictures show how much the spindletop area grew and the oil
boom took over in Texas.
29 Now, how does one explore for oil and gas. Well, over 100 years
ago, how they would explore was to look for nice round mounds, good
sized hills. Only to then realize that just because there is a hill doesnt
mean there is a pocket of oil and gas under it. So the geologists began