Entrepreneurship

Drucker (1985) is very specific about the differences between entrepreneurship in business and in public-service institutions. Service institutions, such as schools, universities, municipalities and labour unions, may actually need innovation and entrepreneurship more than business does. However, it is more difficult to innovate within a service institution where it is hard work to stop what 'we are used to do' and to start work in new ways with new issues.

According to Drucker, we have been used to that innovation in public-service institutions came from outside - represented by newcomers or catastrophes. It is, however a fact, that the public-services institutions have become too important and too big, growing fast since World War II. Therefore, there is an urgent need for innovation from inside the public-service-organizations which leads Drucker to conclude that entrepreneurial management is one of the most important tasks in our time:

To build entrepreneurial management into the exisiting public-service instituion may thus be the foremost politcal task of this generation (p. 171)

On Saturday (March 24th), I'll go to the final day of InnoEvent. 700 students from different programs have worked for a week with developing technological solutions for increasing security for patients in hospitals. I am part of the jury, and I look forward to see and judge all the great ideas and solutions. With this kind of projects, we support crossdisciplinary, authentic solving of problems and an entrepreurial mind-set. The leaders who have actively supported InnoEvent meet Drucker's requirements.

References:
Drucker, P.F. (1985). Innovation and entrepreneurship, Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.