ABSTRACT
For the existing enterprise, whether business or public-service institution, the controlling word in the term “entrepreneurial management” is “entrepreneurial.” For the new venture, it is “management.” In the existing business, it is the existing that is the main obstacle to entrepreneurship. In the new venture, it is its absence. The new venture has an idea. It may have a product or a service. It may even have sales, and sometimes quite a substantial volume of them. To build market focus into a new venture is not in fact particularly difficult. But what is required runs counter to the inclinations of the typical entrepreneur. The lack of adequate financial focus and of the right financial policies is, by contrast, the greatest threat to the new venture in the next stage of its growth. Lack of market focus is typically a disease of the “neonatal,” the infant new venture.
