Inventuring: Why Big Companies Must Think Small

Citation

Chaharbaghi, K. (2003), "Inventuring: Why Big Companies Must Think Small", Management Decision, Vol. 41 No. 9, pp. 957-958. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251740310496927

The word “inventuring” on this book’s title is a made‐up word that refers to the process of creating new businesses inside established firms to create profitable growth. It prescribes that business creation should be placed at the top of management agenda and that business creation capability should be embedded within everyday practices so that it becomes routine. The book contains a comparative study of different business development techniques in order to demonstrate the benefits of business creation over minority investment and mergers and acquisitions. It is claimed that many firms routinely invest in business creation initiatives which subsequently fail to deliver significant organic growth.

The book promotes a way of thinking that emphasises the attributes of small businesses such as agility, creativity and flexibility while not sacrificing the benefits of size such as knowledge, networks and assets. Its structure is clear and logically organised around three sections. The first section explains why business creation is central to two essential goals of growth and renewal in all firms. Using the business creation model “Evaluate‐ Emphasise‐Evade‐Ease”, it is shown that every firm is in one of these four states of business creation and that this can change over time. Sections two and three deal with the business creation process in focused and integrated firms respectively.

The authors acknowledge that there are no quick‐fixes or checklists of the ten things that need to be done next week for business creation. They also do not consider the need for a completely new theory. What they offer instead is a systematic guide to how business creation is conducted by the few companies that seem to know what they are doing in this area. Systematic guides, however, are not factors of growth. They are tools and what individuals do with these tools can stifle or stimulate growth and can hamper or boost profitability. Whilst systematic guides, in a similar fashion to operating manuals, make their users alike in dealing with issues such as business creation, it is the basic values or true feelings of users that make them different. Thus, images that remained after reading this book are that business creation does not reside in systematic guides and any attempt to employ such guides that do not represent the basic values or true feelings of their users can only lead to the creation fantasy businesses, the anti‐thesis of what is required.