Strategic Entrepreneurship
The integration of entrepreneurship with strategy — connecting opportunity-seeking behavior with advantage-seeking behavior to create and sustain organizational wealth.
What is Strategic Entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurship is more than a course of action or a mindset. At an organizational level, it can provide a theme or direction to a company’s entire operations (Kuratko, 2009). It can be an integral component of a firm’s strategy and a core or defining element of a company’s competitive advantage.
Strategic Entrepreneurship integrates opportunity-seeking behavior (entrepreneurial) and advantage-seeking behavior (method) perspectives in developing and taking actions designed to create wealth. Since 1960, focusing on key leaders, managers, and agile teams, our family has created a legacy of Entrepreneurship by building & operating customer-driven product & service-based businesses.
The Kershner family mastered succession planning as a tool and element of entrepreneurial thinking and acting with four generations of business owners and twelve different companies currently owned or sold. We leverage networks of legal & financial advisors for retainage and partnership in the areas of business valuation, transaction advisory, business law, and financial planning.
Strategic Entrepreneurship Tools
Six lenses we use to renew, reposition, and grow established organizations.
Organizational Rejuvenation
“How can we improve our competitive advantage with internal processes, structures & capabilities?”
Renewing internal systems and leadership to recover performance and competitiveness without changing the core business.
Business Model Reconstruction
“Who is the customer, what do they value, how can we make money, and what is our economic logic?”
Designing or redesigning the business model to better serve customers and create sustainable revenue.
Strategic Renewal & Sustained Regeneration
“Should we adopt a new strategy, introduce new products & services, or enter new markets?”
Continuously generating new sources of competitive advantage to sustain growth across lifecycle stages.
Domain Redefinition (Blue Ocean)
“Should we create new or reconfigured product categories and seek unoccupied competitive space?”
Creating new market arenas rather than competing in existing ones — building space where the organization can lead.
Entrepreneurial Leadership
“What is our purpose & culture, what are our competencies, and how do we set ethical boundaries?”
Building a culture that rewards innovation, empowers people, and maintains clear ethical boundaries while pursuing growth.
Creative Resource Leveraging
“Are we utilizing cash, people & assets toward our strategic intent, and how can we get more resources?”
Doing more with what exists — finding creative ways to deploy and attract the resources needed to execute strategy.
Strategy without entrepreneurship is stagnation. Entrepreneurship without strategy is chaos.
ARCH uses the lens of Strategic Entrepreneurship to help established organizations renew themselves across every lifecycle stage — from survival to maturity to exit.