THE ENTREPRENEURIAL STRATEGY WORKBOOK

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL STRATEGY WORKBOOK designed to provide the tools that are needed to entrench the practice of entrepreneurial strategy-making and execution. Since entrepreneurship exists for the core purpose of driving the creation of value and wealth through the consistent development and delivery of products and services which satisfy the needs and expectations of customers, it logically follows that it is a fundamentally customer-focused and customer-driven business! The fundamentally customer-focused and customer-driven nature of entrepreneurship makes it imperative for entrepreneurial strategy to be deliberately designed to be pervasively customer-centered. This means three things which include the following: • Optimal customer alignment is a fundamental imperative of entrepreneurial strategy-making • Entrepreneurship rises and falls on customer alignment and • The biggest challenge of entrepreneurial strategy-making is for the entrepreneur to demonstrate the ability to devise a distinctly customer-focused strategic plot! The recognition of the fact that customer-focused strategy-making is the main plot of entrepreneurial strategy is a giant step of immense strategic significance because it challenges business and non-business actors undertaking strategic planning and strategy-making in their respective industries, markets and development arenas to shift their focus from their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of their competitors to the needs and expectations of their customers! The fundamental logic of the customer-focused strategy-making equation is that the most important strategic choices that every Business makes are those which are connected to creating and retaining the most profitable customers as well as growing the customer base and these all-important strategic choices are best made by putting customers at the top of the strategic agenda! What is more strategic than a Business making strategic choices by evaluating its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and those of its competition within the purview of its customer alignment? Is it possible for any Business that lacks customer alignment to achieve any degree of strategic advantage? The bottom-line of entrepreneurial strategy is the delivery of superior services. The game-plan is to be distinctive in the development and deployment of service planning, service quality assurance and service profitability assurance capabilities.