When small is not enough: How to save entrepreneurs from themselves

This article goes beyond the traditional celebration of Entrepreneurship to focus on why Entrepreneurship is not enough. First, entrepreneurial companies that have overcome the start-up difficulties, must become “professionalized” in order to consolidate their gains and face a period of stable growth. This, as is well-known, is not easy. But there is another, even harder problem: in becoming “professional”, most companies lose the entrepreneurial spirit that made them successful in the first place. In an ever-changing world, with more and more international competition in the face of Europe's unification in 1992, a company that loses its entrepreneurial sparkle is just waiting for dismissal. This article analyzes the main causes of that “hardening of the arteries” and their proven remedies.