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It has long been assumed that, in the development of any organization, the time for entrepreneurial activity is right at the beginning. Once an organization is established, qualities that were virtues in the organization’s start-up and early stages can become vices, and the entrepreneurial founders must cede control to professional managers who can nurture the fruits of their original vision more efficiently.

One unintended consequence of this assumption is that large, established organizations tend to be entrepreneur-free zones. Entrepreneurial thinking is tacitly discouraged because it can create novelty, and novelty is a threat to established organizations with large market shares.

Re-entrepreneuring argues that organizations must revive the entrepreneurial out-look of their founders in order to survive in today’s market. In an organization that encourages and nurtures an entrepreneurial outlook, everyone has the potential to unleash their inner entrepreneur and bring new and dynamic ways of thinking into their work environment. It has more to do with the ways of thinking encouraged by the organizational culture than by any inherent differences in talent or aptitude.

The solution presented in this new book is piecemeal yet targeted ‘re-entrepreneuring’. With the help of international case studies and first-hand testimony from business leaders, the authors show how the entrepreneurial approach can be applied to any organization and at all levels, in order to spark innovation, remove operational obstacles and – ultimately – to create new value.

In a book of narrative history and practical strategy, IMD professor of management and innovation Howard Yu shows that succeeding in today’s marketplace is no longer just a matter of mastering copycat tactics, companies also need to leap across knowledge disciplines, and to reimagine how a product is made or a service is delivered. This proven tactic can protect a company from being overtaken by new (and often foreign) copycat competitors.

Using riveting case studies of successful leaps and tragic falls, Yu illustrates five principles to success that span a wide range of industries, countries, and eras. Learn about how P&G in the 19th century made the leap from handcrafted soaps and candles to mass production of its signature brand Ivory, leaped into the new fields of consumer psychology and advertising, then leaped again, at the risk of cannibalizing its core product, into synthetic detergents and won with Tide in 1946. Learn about how Novartis and other pharma pioneers stayed ahead by making leaps from chemistry to microbiology to genomics in drug discovery; and how forward-thinking companies, including China’s largest social media app–WeChat, Tokyo-based Internet service provider Recruit Holdings, and Illinois-headquartered John Deere are leaping ahead by leveraging the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity, the inexorable rise of intelligent machines, and the rising importance of managerial creativity.

Outlasting competition is difficult; doing so over decades or a century is nearly impossible–unless one leaps. Ultimately, Leap is a manifesto for how pioneering companies can endure and prosper in a world of constant change and inevitable copycats.