Andrew Hargadon

The Entrepreneurial Leap

This series of posts (finally) puts to words the approach, the ideas, and the tools developed and tested in the programs of the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship.

Our work focuses on the first of three critical moments in the life of a new venture—the entrepreneurial leap.  This is the moment (that can take months, or more if not careful) when the original entrepreneurs make the decision whether to start a new venture or not, and take the first steps that, often unknowingly, send them down paths they may take years, if ever, to recover from.

The ongoing series of posts focusing on the entrepreneurial leap can be found by visiting The Entrepreneurial Leap >>

The iEconomy

The NYT article on Apple and employment, How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work , offers valuable insights into the future of manufacturing. But there is a way out.

in•venn•tion of the day... on management's attention

The normal dysfunction of organizations

The more corporations grow in size, power, and political rights, the greater our need to understand them. The greater our need, particularly, to understand how they so easily go bad. The recent in-depth article by Peter Thamel and Mark Viera, on Penn State’s Board of Trustees's Painful Decision to Fire Paterno explains as much about the dangers of normal dysfunction in organizations as it does about the crimes committed.

in•venn•tion of the day... on time, money, and innovation

March on Leadership

Organizational leadership is a contradiction in terms. The essence of organization is routine, conventional behavior, bound by the standards of knowledge, morality, and legality of the time, The essence of leadership, on the other hand, is escaping the routine, the standard, and the contemporary to implement a new morality, knowledge, and legality quite different from that seen by others. Leadership is pre-eminently anti-organizational. Leaders confront organizations rather than build or serve them. Thus, to speak of the CEOs of business firms, the presidents of labor unions, the directors of governmental agencies, and the commanders of conventional military units as leaders is absurd. They are not and could not be. Leadership will always come from outside organizations and will always be resisted by individuals who are conventional and reliable enough to be given formal positions of authority. There is no possibility of an organizational career for anyone with true leadership capabilities and instincts.

Jim March and Therry Weil (p38) [On Leadership](http://www.amazon.com/Leadership-James-G-March/dp/1405132477)