Achieving Longevity: How Great Firms Prosper Through Entrepreneurial Thinking

Starting a business is hard, but keeping an established company going can be equally challenging. In the long run, every business will need to adapt to changing market conditions, technologies, and competitive environments. Achieving Longevity explains how to manage those changes through entrepreneurial thinking. As Jim Dewald shows, the most successful companies thrive by establishing decision-making processes that constantly engage new opportunities, enabling the firm to quickly adapt to disruptive technologies and business models. They allow for tinkering and experimentation and strive to both exploit their competitive advantage today and explore new ideas that will give them an edge tomorrow. Achieving Longevity provides a framework for introducing the tools and culture necessary to foster entrepreneurial thinking, as well as advice on how to overcome common obstacles to corporate entrepreneurship. Drawing on Dr. Dewald’s own experience as an entrepreneur, a successful corporate executive, and a professor of strategy, the book offers numerous examples of how to combine the strengths of an established firm with the innovative, outside the box thinking of a start-up venture.