The Ever-Evolving Enterprise: Guidelines for Creating Your Company's Future

by Stephen C. Harper, Brett Martin

Overview

This insightful guide showcases a new psychological framework through which business leaders can transform themselves and their organizations.

"Most managers," author Stephen C. Harper writes, "do not understand what is involved in transforming organizations." His book, The Ever-Evolving Enterprise: Guidelines for Creating Your Company's Future, is intended to remedy that, focusing on ten areas proactive business leaders must address as they guide their companies through everyday activities and into the future.

The book stresses the need for firms to evolve to remain in sync with an ever-changing marketplace. It explores the multifaceted nature of transformational leadership and offers specific guidelines, ideas, and techniques leaders can institute to seize new opportunities and develop innovative products and services that offer sustainable competitive advantages. But it also invites executives to take a closer look at how they lead their firms, promoting a fresh psychological framework that will keep business leaders—and their companies—anticipatory, perceptive, agile, innovative, results-oriented, and able to execute so that their visions become realities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313391835
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/04/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Stephen C. Harper, PhD, is the Progress Energy/Betty Cameron Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

Table of Contents

Foreword Brett Martin ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction. Evolve or Die: The Nature of the Ever-Evolving Enterprise xv

1 Guidelines for Transformational Change 1

2 The Breakthrough Leader's Role in Creating the Company's Future 31

3 Anticipatory Management: Carpé Futurum! 57

4 Guidelines for Visioning and Positioning Your Company 76

5 Establishing a Results-Oriented Performance Management System 100

6 Corpreneurship: Creating Your Company's Future by Maintaining the Entrepreneurial Edge 118

7 Fostering Speed and Agility 154

8 Becoming a Learning Organization 179

9 Creating a Corporate Culture That Fosters Innovation 210

10 Developing a Competitive Edge through Smart Execution 233

Epilogue 259

Index 263

What People are Saying About This

J. Tobin Geatz

"Dr. Harper has done it again! He gives entrepreneurs and executives alike a roadmap to growth in today's 'new normal, post-economic meltdown world.' His emphasis on personal accountability and metrics is just the tonic that we need to emerge and thrive in today's global environment. Steve offers practical ways to incorporate strategic initiatives into daily business life that are concise and precise. The Ever Evolving Enterprise is helping me develop the instrument panel to keep my business straight and level through stormy weather."

—

J. Tobin Geatz, CEO, serial entrepreneur and pilot

J. Tobin Geatz

"Dr. Harper has done it again! He gives entrepreneurs and executives alike a roadmap to growth in today's 'new normal, post-economic meltdown world.' His emphasis on personal accountability and metrics is just the tonic that we need to emerge and thrive in today's global environment. Steve offers practical ways to incorporate strategic initiatives into daily business life that are concise and precise. The Ever Evolving Enterprise is helping me develop the instrument panel to keep my business straight and level through stormy weather."
— J. Tobin Geatz, CEO, serial entrepreneur and pilot

Tom Looney

"Dr. Harper provides an achievable model for making innovation and creativity part of the 21st century organization. Steve urges leaders to acknowledge chaos and embrace change in order to maintain and extend market leadership. Chapter nine brings to life the art and science of innovation, and challenges us to create the future rather than languish in the present ... essential and timely ideas!"

Tom Looney

"Dr. Harper provides an achievable model for making innovation and creativity part of the 21st century organization. Steve urges leaders to acknowledge chaos and embrace change in order to maintain and extend market leadership. Chapter nine brings to life the art and science of innovation, and challenges us to create the future rather than languish in the present….essential and timely ideas!"

—

Tom Looney, entrepreneur and computer software industry executive (Oracle, Microsoft, NeXT, and Active Software)

Rick Randall

"The Ever-Evolving Enterprise targets a critical challenge to creating and maintaining a company geared for long-term success—ever-accelerating change. Steve Harper effectively profiles the 'Breakthrough Leader', genetically wired to combat organizational complacency and catalyze, rather than react to, change. He then lays the blueprint for such leaders to identify and acquire the human capital necessary to develop and foster the 'corpreneurial' culture, crucial to managing a successful, ever-evolving enterprise."

Brett Martin

"Dr. Harper is a rare author. He is always looking to the future in an effort to never repeat the mistakes of the past. While many look to the past as a guide, Dr. Harper understands that the strategies we used before the great economic storm will no longer deliver success in today’s economy. He makes a most compelling argument that today is a most appropriate time to learn and practice corporate entrepreneurship."

Rick Randall

"The Ever-Evolving Enterprise targets a critical challenge to creating and maintaining a company geared for long-term success -- ever-accelerating change. Steve Harper effectively profiles the 'Breakthrough Leader', genetically wired to combat organizational complacency and catalyze, rather than react to, change. He then lays the blueprint for such leaders to identify and acquire the human capital necessary to develop and foster the 'corpreneurial' culture, crucial to managing a successful, ever-evolving enterprise."

—

Rick Randall, CEO, TranS1, Inc.