"The process of creating something different with value by devoting the necessary time and effort, assuming the accompanying financial, psychic, and social risks, and receiving the resulting rewards of monetary and personal satisfaction and independence"
Some Warnings
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Hard work
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Lots of anxiety and frustration
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High failure rate
Marco Polo - the "first" entrepreneur
 financed by venture capitalist
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Paid 22.5% interest
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Venture capitalist retained 75% of the profits
Some trends
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420,000 businesses failed in the 1980s
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For every one that failed, 15 new ones emerged
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Two big influences - immigrants & women
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50% of college students consider an entrepreneurial career
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About 2 million new companies being formed every year
So you still want to make a firm ?
Let’s get clear what you need – you as a PERSON
Then you have to apply this in two ways:

What your firm needs to start-up successfully

What your firm needs to keep going successfully
To start up you will need enormous enthusiasm and drive. Do you have a good idea ?
You need STRUCTURE and CONTENT:
Are you someone who ”goes up” in your speciality ? you’ll need to be to have an idea no-one else has had ! Are you a ”Nerd”. It’s OK, Nerds are often fabulous experts in their field, but are Nerds equipped to survive in a sophisticated economic & business environment ? Nerds have CONTENT, but little structure. One of the most famous –
Thomas Eddison – went broke 4 times, and then only had marginal financial success*.
Do you burn to market something ? anything ?? What about the latest psycho-theory in HR written by a California guru who’s just been on the Operah Winfrey Show – yeah ! That’s gotta sell well !! Looks like you’ve got STRUCTURE, but no content.

There are lots of 1 man ”management consultants” (or whatever name) around, and they stay 1-man firms !
STRUCTURE and CONTENT complement each other. Partnerships where one delivers the content and the other the structure, are the simplest form of Strategic
Alliance (see kompendium\ti\alliance.doc ). This involves trust, but deep friendship is not really needed (Hewlett & Packard decided to live in different cities. After their
Nobel Prize, Watson & Crick were well-known for heaping personal abuse on each other).
Do you have both STRUCTURE and CONTENT ? Lucky you. When such a person starts a firm they know and can do all jobs. As the firm expands more will be employed – oftest through personal contacts – but still the ”boss”, despite informality
(often extreme informality) will still be theoretically able to do all jobs, he/she simply has to have employees because s/he has no time !
More expansion: perhaps a financial/wage section. The bank and potential investors are visiting, where is the boss’ business suit ? What does the boss know about ”doing the books” ? ledgers ? loans ? business intellegence ? At this point 2 things can happen:

The boss continues as boss, chaos everywhere, boss has physical/mental breakdown, firm fails.
 The boss hires competent specialists, a ”Board” and becomes division head
(typically ”Development” where informal atmosphere promotes new products), firm succeeds.
The conclusion of the above is:
1.
If you can do it all (STRUCTURE and CONTENT) then start your own firm, but realize that in being a good boss of a ”start-up”, you will be a bad boss of a mature firm, so get out of the leadership.
2.
If you have CONTENT, (or STRUCTURE) then find a team-mate. But don’t expect a personal friendship afterward, the ”Manager” part of the team may well ”go on” with the professional leadership (described in 1) and may well end up with more money. The ”Nerd” may be resentful (”…. he made millions out of my ideas … ”), which will provoke the ”Manager” (”….. with my talent
I could have picked up anybody ….. he’d still have nothing if it weren’t for me …..”).
It is important to realize that firms have Life Cycles – just as its products have Life
Cycles. These indeed are very similar. Let’s take a look at the different kinds of leadership a firm needs as it prograsses through its Life Cycle.
Corporate and Managerial Personalities
The stages of the organizational life cycle are characterized by personality changes.
By the same token, there are various managerial personality types, each of which fits into specific types of organizations with a varying degree of success. The key is to

understand the corporate and managerial personalities so that when compatibility of alliance partners and teams is considered, strategies will be designed to take into account the different behavioral and cultural preferences in order to communicate in the language of the receiver of information and align expectations accordingly.
Stage 1: The Startup Stage - Adventurer Managers
Startup companies, where revenues and activities are just beginning, generally attract
Adventurer managers. These managers are the ultimate risk-takers who combine that quality with an absolute and unshakable belief in their vision. This can often reach the level of obsession which is sometimes unrealistic. The Adventurer's sense of urgency will compel venture capitalists to invest seed capital in his idea, and will entice others to back his hopes and fund his grand designs. While his wonderful self confidence should be recognized, attention must also be given to his lack of patience with the management process - often expressed as an unwillingness to delegate, monitor, allow for errors and correct a subordinate's actions - and his unilateral decision-making style.
Stage 2: The Hockeystick Stage - Warrior Managers
The next stage of corporate growth is the Hockeystick stage - a period of increasing revenue which on a graph of time versus revenues looks like a Hockeystick as it rises in accelerated growth. This is when the Warrior manager is in charge. He will be a charismatic leader, directing, controlling and inspiring those who work for him, most of whom mirror his energy and commitment. He is aggressive and unrelenting in his focus. Many Warrior managers do not sustain their initial success when the company's growth wanes and the Warrior's directive, sometimes combative style is now seen as abrasive and begins to backfire. The Warrior is often ousted from the very company whose growth he helped to fuel unless he complements his capabilities with other managers who fit the next life cycle stage.
Stage 3: The Professional Stage - Hunter Managers
The Hunter manager fits squarely into the company as it moves through its professional stage of becoming more systematic, collaborative and proactive.
Revenues are still growing but not as aggressively as in the Hockeystick stage. Often the Warrior manager is made chairman of the board or moves out of the company as the Hunter comes in and installs systems, processes and a team approach. Some
Warriors grow into Hunters; others function well with their Hunter counterparts.
Stage 4: Mature and Consolidating Stage - Farmer Managers
The next corporate life-cycle stage is Mature and Consolidating where the revenue growth is slowing and the Farmer manager holds sway. He is seasoned, with the patience to sow seeds and wait for them to mature, but sometimes becomes complacent. Complacency could be a sign that he will not be risking his reputation if

the decision fails. He is clearly an "Old Boy Network" member and verifies his decisions first with his internal circle before going forward.
Stage 5: The Declining Stage Politician Managers
The Declining company is run by Politician managers. Their most regrettable quality is to take a perfectly good business opportunity and kill it through self-protective activities, delaying tactics, political game playing and fear of action. Politician managers will detail a project to death, and ultimately will destroy the company. This manager is totally risk-averse, covering his or her rear and encouraging memo writing to such a degree that paperwork is a protection against reality. While the Hunter is unlikely to want Politicians in his organization, the Farmer is far more likely to tolerate the Politician manager. After all, he is but one step away from that stage himself.
Stage 6: The Sustaining Stage - Visionary Managers
The Visionary manager inspires hope and empowerment through his results-oriented, assertive, and confident demeanor. A classic example of a Visionary manager is
George Fisher of Eastman Kodak. The Visionary manager enters a Declining company with a breath of promise to transform it into a Sustaining one. The challenge is to take a company that is highly formalized, structured, and generally matrix-style, and to streamline it to become more effective and flexible. The Visionary manager has some of the characteristics of the Adventurer, such as inspiration and intense drive, but is more experienced and measured in style. The Visionary manager has generally been a professional Hunter manager for a substantial period of his or her business life and is familiar with the Politician types too - he can spot them a mile off and will isolate or terminate them in large numbers.
Where the Visionary differs greatly from the Adventurer and Warrior is in his ability to build and empower teams while still taking risks and bringing about systematic change. Adventurers are generally inconsistent in their efforts to delegate decisionmaking and Warriors are often impatient with team building processes. The Visionary manager is usually accompanied by an “assault team” team - a small group of leaders who may have been with the Visionary in former turnarounds or helped the Visionary to succeed in past activities. They will help improve the serious morale problems that often exist in the company that the Visionary enters.
* = Eddison made thousands of inventions & innovations, many of them good, but he insisted on running the businesses himself, making a f**k up of all of them. Upon
“inventing” the light bulb he put more thought into it – not business thought, but publicity thought. Eddison had a US patent, but an Englishman named Swan had invented it in England too (actually before Eddison), However Swan had not thought marketing through either – he thought it could have a speciality use in coal mines – so he sold when Eddison offered to buy his patent. Then in a huge publicity event (street

lighting for a whole town) Eddison tried to “invent” a whole industry, from building
& running all electric power stations to production of all bulbs and all lighting appliances simultaneously !
Question: What type of Manager is in a ministry or local government. What implications does this have ?