Chapter Summaries

  • Entrepreneurs benefit greatly from understanding leadership, but leaders who seek to thrive in times of change must learn to innovate and take on an entrepreneurial leadership mindset. The more you learn about leadership it becomes apparent that leadership is about you and not about you simultaneously. Navigating that balance will allow you to harness innovation and maximize your success.
  • Effective leaders must design and make their own paths, seeing and pursuing opportunities for innovation. The field of entrepreneurship provides a unique set of concepts, mindsets, and activities that can help leaders spot, translate, and develop value.
  • Entrepreneurship is the process of pursuing opportunity through the conception, validation, and launch of new ideas into the marketplace. This activity goes beyond the field of business and can include every field including social, political, and within existing organizations.
  • Each action within the definition requires specific knowledge and skills, as well as a number of mindsets that enable entrepreneurs to see differently. This includes a growth mindset, being mindful and observant, reframing problems as opportunities, ideating and effectuating, taking reflective action, and staying focused on purpose.
  • Leading the entrepreneurial process using tools like the business model canvas and lean start-up methods enables entrepreneurial leaders to minimize risk and iterate to find the most successful path forward.
  • As a venture grows, entrepreneurial leaders must shift their roles and focus from founder to innovator to team builder to chief executive. Each role requires a differing skill set aligned to the needs of the developing venture.