Entrepreneurship: The Art and Science of Entrepreneurship, Leadership, and Management

Every person who starts, owns or is a member of the management team of a company must strive to create a sustainable advantage. Sustainable advantage is essential to value creation because cash flows become predictable and reliable over long periods of time. As a consequence, it is easier to plan investments in new ventures and to maintain contingency reserves for recessions.

Building a sustainable advantage requires competence in the disciplines of entrepreneurship, leadership and management. Collectively, these three disciplines encompass the “business.”

Entrepreneurship is both an art and a science. Art is an occupation that requires both knowledge and skills; science is a method to systematize knowledge. Through knowledge and skills, Entrepreneurship provides a systematized approach to building sustainable businesses by employing entrepreneurship, leadership and management techniques.

Entrepreneurship is a competency to start, develop and take risks for a company. Leadership is a competency to aspire, inspire and motivate others. Management is a competence to direct and control events and activities: management as a “team” has the authority and responsibility of the company.

Being proficient in all three competencies requires experience. Entrepreneurs may lack the leadership and management skills, leaders may lack the business and management skills, and managers may lack the business and leadership skills to build a sustainable business.

Upwardly mobile entrepreneurs have to prove to investors that they can build great markets. Owners of commercial lifestyle businesses, such as dry cleaners, hairdressers, professional service providers, restaurateurs, and retailers, are responsible for everything in their businesses. Executives and managers of the largest companies are under constant pressure from investors to deliver quality earnings on an ongoing basis.

The company depends on the use of the three business competencies as well as employees, customers, suppliers and investors.

When entrepreneurs start businesses, they tend to focus on the benefits and features of their products and/or services. Intrapreneurs, who are change agents in established companies, tend to do the same. However, focusing only on products and/or services is not enough to generate a sustainable advantage over time.

Without people there is nothing in business. Processes must be effective and efficient to deliver quality products and/or services in a convenient manner. If a company can’t deliver, a competitor will.

Therefore, the management team collectively must be proficient in the entrepreneurial, leadership, and managerial roles that dictate successful people-oriented, process-oriented, and product- and/or service-oriented capabilities.

The entrepreneurial role is both process and product oriented, through which innovative ideas are transformed into value at every stage of a company’s development.

The leadership role is people-oriented, setting the direction others will follow to achieve results, equally applicable to senior executives, team leaders within functions, or anywhere in between.

The managerial role is process-oriented, through which resources (time, materials, and supplies) are applied to activities to achieve results.

These three roles encompass planning and policy development, deployment and execution, and enterprise performance measurement activities. Deployment means positioning the company’s resources in the best markets for its products and/or services. Execution means getting things done through people and processes effectively and efficiently.

Unless the management team employs these three business competencies collectively to address the capabilities of people, processes, and products and/or services, the company will not be able to create sustainable advantage over time and ultimately, will decay and perhaps fail.

If the management team can systematize the creation of a sustainable advantage through the effective and efficient use of people and processes, there will be more time to develop the benefits and characteristics of the products and/or services. Enterprise provides the focus…