Leadership Essentials: Enterprise
Although ‘enterprise’ is sometimes used as another name for ‘business’, ‘enterprise’ is more commonly used to describe the actions of someone who shows initiative and takes risks by setting-up and running their own business or investing in someone else’s. Enterprising individuals are called ‘entrepreneurs’, and enterprising employees are called ‘intrapreneurs’. You can be enterprising in all kinds of organisation, private, public and voluntary, as well as in communities. For an organisation to be ‘enterprising’, it needs both entrepreneurship (individual enterprise) and innovation (organisational enterprise) to identify and exploit opportunities.
‘Leadership Essentials: Enterprise’ provides an overview of why enterprise is essential for leadership capability and includes ‘Top Tips’ on how being enterprising can help you become a better leader.
The Essentials leaflet is supported by three Spotlights that look at enterprise in more detail to help you improve your leadership skills:
- What is Enterprise?
- The Entrepreneurial Leader
- Growing your Business
Spotlights
Spotlight on What is Enterprise
"Individuals can be enterprising in how they live their lives and those that are enterprising create and pursue more opportunities for themselves"
Lowe and Marriott (2016)
Spotlight on Entrepreneurial Leader
"At the age of 22, I started a company. I had no knowledge about anything – I just threw myself into the water and learned how to swim."
Diane von Furstenberg Fashion icon; quoted in Lumsdaine and Binks, 2006
Spotlight on Growing your Business
"Perhaps that’s the intuition part -- knowing precisely which signs to focus on and follow in planning your business’s growth. But generally, if you have stable cash flow, evidence of reliable and growing demand and long-term profitability, your chances of successful business growth skyrocket."
Mike Kappel (2017)