Transformative entrepreneurship

This chapter details how the relationship among entrepreneurial roles, strategic elements, and firm size develops as time moves on, and what kind of instability appears when the proper balance between these three phenomena does not take place. In 2016, Optics11 was one of the most innovative small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Netherlands. In that year the firm ranked seventh in the Netherlands and second in Amsterdam on the list of the most innovative SMEs compiled by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and the leading Dutch newspaper De Financiele Telegraaf. The essence of entrepreneurship is the ‘identification and exploitation of previously unexploited opportunities’. Like a living organism, the small firm is conceived at a certain moment in time and then develops through a number of consecutive stages. The well-known axiom that ‘the only constant is change’ reflects the fact that firms move through different stages as they grow.