The Ever-Evolving Enterprise
Guidelines for Creating Your Company's Future
by Stephen C. Harper
January 2011, 276pp, 6 1/8x9 1/4
1 volume, Praeger

Hardcover: 978-0-313-39183-5
$55, £43, 48€, A76
eBook Available: 978-0-313-39184-2
Please contact your preferred eBook vendor for pricing.

Corporate success in the years ahead will take more than fine-tuning existing operations. It will take more than piecemeal application of reactive, stopgap measures. The future of business will belong to executives who understand the multifaceted nature of change, who welcome innovation, think proactively, and have the courage to move ahead of the pack.

This insightful guide showcases a new psychological framework through which business leaders can transform themselves and their organizations.

“Most managers,” author Stephen C. Harper writes, “do not understand what is involved in transforming organizations.” His book, The Ever-Evolving Enterprise: Guidelines for Creating Your Company’s Future, is intended to remedy that, focusing on ten areas proactive business leaders must address as they guide their companies through everyday activities and into the future.

The book stresses the need for firms to evolve to remain in sync with an ever-changing marketplace. It explores the multifaceted nature of transformational leadership and offers specific guidelines, ideas, and techniques leaders can institute to seize new opportunities and develop innovative products and services that offer sustainable competitive advantages. But it also invites executives to take a closer look at how they lead their firms, promoting a fresh psychological framework that will keep business leaders—and their companies—anticipatory, perceptive, agile, innovative, results-oriented, and able to execute so that their visions become realities.

Features

  • Hundreds of cautions, insights, tips, and techniques
  • Candid "reality checks" throughout
  • Chapter-ending quizzes that profile the extent to which a firm is demonstrating the qualities of Ever-Evolving Enterprises
  • Numerous figures that profile the multidimensional nature of organizational transformation
  • Sources and notes at the end of each chapter
Stephen C. Harper, PhD, is the Progress Energy/Betty Cameron Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, NC. Harper is a best-selling author who has written numerous books on leadership and entrepreneurship. He was president of a consulting firm and three economic development organizations, has conducted hundreds of seminars for corporations and government agencies, and won numerous awards for his teaching, writing, and service.


Reviews

"Dr. Harper provides an achievable model for making innovation and creativity part of the 21st century organization. Steve urges leaders to acknowledge chaos and embrace change in order to maintain and extend market leadership. Chapter nine brings to life the art and science of innovation, and challenges us to create the future rather than languish in the present ... essential and timely ideas!"—Tom Looney, Entrepreneur and Computer Software Industry Executive (Oracle, Microsoft, NeXT, and Active Software)

"The Ever-Evolving Enterprise targets a critical challenge to creating and maintaining a company geared for long-term success—ever-accelerating change. Steve Harper effectively profiles the 'Breakthrough Leader', genetically wired to combat organizational complacency and catalyze, rather than react to, change. He then lays the blueprint for such leaders to identify and acquire the human capital necessary to develop and foster the 'corpreneurial' culture, crucial to managing a successful, ever-evolving enterprise."—Rick Randall, CEO, TranS1, Inc.

"Dr. Harper has done it again! He gives entrepreneurs and executives alike a roadmap to growth in today's 'new normal, post-economic meltdown world.' His emphasis on personal accountability and metrics is just the tonic that we need to emerge and thrive in today's global environment. Steve offers practical ways to incorporate strategic initiatives into daily business life that are concise and precise. The Ever-Evolving Enterprise is helping me develop the instrument panel to keep my business straight and level through stormy weather."—J. Tobin Geatz, CEO, serial Entrepreneur and Pilot

"Dr. Harper is a rare author. He is always looking to the future in an effort to never repeat the mistakes of the past. While many look to the past as a guide, Dr. Harper understands that the strategies we used before the great economic storm will no longer deliver success in today’s economy. He makes a most compelling argument that today is a most appropriate time to learn and practice corporate entrepreneurship."—Brett Martin, Founder and CEO of Castle Branch, Inc.
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