Entrepreneurs see opportunities where none seem to exist. It means a Bill Gates refusing to sell the source code of a MS-DOS to IBM, and proposing instead a small licensing fee for every copy of the software bundles with IBM computers. Steve Wozniak had approached his employer Hewlett-Packard with the design of the original Apple 1 personal computer five times, only to be turned down each time. It took a Steve Jobs to convince him to leave HP and strike out on their own together.
Mintzberg developed the concept of an “Entrepreneurial school” of strategy making (Strategy Safari: A guided tour through the wilds of strategic management):
In the entrepreneurial mode, strategy making is dominated by the active search for new opportunities. The entrepreneurial organization focuses on opportunities; problems are secondary.
Fresh success stories come up every day: While Rosetta Stone and Duolingo are known internationally for learning foreign languages, here comes “Hello English”, from Jaipur, India. Hello English is an English learning app, focused on the Indian market and teaching English via 12 vernacular languages of India. Within eight months of its launch, Hello English has become the top selling app on Google Play. It works offline as well, and is supported by a chat feature with ‘English experts’.
