Tag Archives: effectuation

Is Meta the new Kodak? Eight history lessons on the necessity and risks of big innovation bets

Posted on November 18, 2022 | 3 comments

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is doing badly. The announcement of its poor results was very badly received by the stock market. The company lost 25% of its value in one day. The weakness of Facebook and the doubts about the relevance of the colossal investment made in the metaverse, a system creating a virtual world, question the strategy of the company. The weakness of the legacy activity, and the difficulty to launch a new activity, the situation of Meta is not unlike that of Kodak twenty years ago. A look at the history of the major bets made by companies to launch or renew themselves is useful to better understand the issues facing Meta and avoid hasty judgments.

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Entrepreneurship and human action: Why the award received by Darden’s Saras Sarasvathy is important

Posted on June 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

Saras Sarasvathy, the originator of the entrepreneurial theory of effectuation, has just received the prestigious Swedish Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. Organized since 1996 by the Swedish Foundation for Small Business Research (FSF) and the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, the award recognizes researchers who made major contributions to entrepreneurship research. She joins such great researchers as Sidney Winter, Shaker Zahra, Kathleen Eisenhardt, Scott Shane, Israel Kirzner, William Gartner, William Beaumol or Zoltan Acs and David Audretsch. The prize is the recognition of more than twenty years of efforts to promote a radically different approach to entrepreneurship. But its significance goes far beyond that, as effectuation is above all a vision of human action and freedom.

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The public decision-maker in uncertainty: towards the technical democracy

Posted on December 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

The generalized uncertainty in which our societies are immersed, combined with their growing complexity, undermines the authority of experts whose knowledge is more easily questioned. This is particularly true for public decision-makers, who are now faced with systematic challenges to their decisions, whatever the field. Understanding the causes and stakes of what some call “technical democracy”, but also its potential dangers, is becoming essential.

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Responding to the Covid-19 Crisis: Three Courses of Action for a CEO

Posted on March 21, 2020 | 2 comments

[Version française ici]

In these times of coronavirus epidemic, I have the opportunity to talk to people from very different backgrounds (emergency doctors, researchers, self-employed people, entrepreneurs, retirees, business leaders, etc.) to understand how they “live” the current crisis both personally and professionally. From these discussions, I can draw three courses of action that a CEO can usefully adopt in the face of the extreme and unprecedented situation we are experiencing. Continue reading →

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Posted in entrepreneurship, Strategic surprise, uncertainty

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The Three Principles that Entrepreneurs Use to Control their Risk

Posted on December 4, 2019 | 1 comment

How do entrepreneurs manage risk? A persistent and widely shared belief is that entrepreneurs are risk seekers; that they like taking risk. Ask anyone in the street or in a classroom, and they will tell you, “An entrepreneur is someone who is courageous, who likes to take risks.” But nothing could be further from the truth. Entrepreneurs don’t like risk; no study has ever shown that. What studies show is that while entrepreneurs are willing to take risks, because they recognize that it is necessary, they try to control them. To do that, they use three principles that are at the core of the entrepreneurial theory called effectuation, proposed twenty years ago by Darden professor Saras Sarasvathy.

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Stop Bothering your Employees with Entrepreneurship

Posted on October 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

It is decided, the theme of your next company convention will be “All entrepreneurs!” You’ll talk about Google, Tesla, Facebook, plus a Chinese champion for good measure. The manager of your Lab in San Francisco will come to talk about the latest local innovations. You will show a film that will explain “the six qualities of a good entrepreneur” with rock opera music. After a closing speech by the leader who, in essence, will say that it is only a matter of courage, the roadmap will be clear.

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Posted in entrepreneurship, transformation

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Entrepreneurship for all: the beautiful story of Madame Tao

Posted on June 27, 2018 | 1 comment

Overwhelmed by stories of fundraising, pitches, startups, incubators and the frenzy of hackathons, we often forget that the vast majority of the entrepreneurial phenomenon is in fact fairly mundane and banal. Well banal, in a way. Let’s say that the heroism of some entrepreneurs is far from the kind we hear and read all the time in the media. Nothing illustrates this better than the story of Madame Tao, which seems to have come out of a fairy tale.

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Effectual leadership: How to (really) transform organizations by learning from entrepreneurs

Posted on May 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

In 1934, a visionary General De Gaulle explained how the massive use of tanks in time of war could give a decisive advantage. The tanks were known since the First World War, but they were only used as reinforcement of the infantry. De Gaulle proposed to revise this conception completely and place it at the center of the military effort. He was not listened to except by the German general Guderian who put this idea into practice successfully a few years later … against France.

The same is true for the transformation of organizations: the importance of integrating entrepreneurs has long been recognized and organizations have made efforts in this direction, but only in order to become more entrepreneurial. It is this conception that must be revisited: entrepreneurs should not just come to reinforce the existing management, but contribute to transform it by their principles of action. Let’s see how.

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Effectuation: How Entrepreneurs (Really) create new products, new organizations and new markets.

Posted on October 16, 2017 | 7 comments

How do you create a company? Very simple! Start with a vision based on a great idea. Write a business plan, raise money from an investor, create the company, assemble a great team and implement the plan, to conquer the world. Successful entrepreneurs are creative and visionary, ambitious, persevering, dynamic, courageous, real leaders, charismatic, but also caring and open to others, and many other things. In short, superheroes. It’s simple… but it’s not true! Or at least it rarely happens that way. Time to dispel a few myths.

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My article on the Peter Drucker Forum blog: “The 5 principles on which we can create an entrepreneurial society”

Posted on November 7, 2016 | Leave a comment

I have just published an article on the Global Peter Drucker Forum‘s blog, at  which I will be a panel member, titled: “The 5 principles on which we can create an entrepreneurial society”. It can be accessed here.

The Forum’s program is available here.

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