Making it new

Making it new

Portrait of Stefan Schaible
Senior Partner, Global Managing Partner
Frankfurt Office, Central Europe
October 31, 2018

How mature companies can bring back the energy of their startup days and achieve a new era of prosperity

For most companies, entrepreneurship tends to be associated with the company’s early years – a lively period when leaders with bold ideas flourish, taking their firm to undreamed heights. It’s a special period, but it seldom lasts. Over time, this spirit slowly fades, never to be recovered.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Occasionally, a company will enjoy a renaissance as a rare leader pilots a faltering older company to a new period of success. In Re-entrepreneuring: How to combine an organization’s strengths with the start-up mindset (Bloomsbury, 2018, by the Partners of Roland Berger, edited by Charles-Edouard Bouée and Stefan Schaible), the Roland Berger Partners make the case that these kinds of second-wave successes are often not a fluke but the result of a deliberate strategy. The truth, the corporate strategists have concluded, is that these mature enterprises succeeded by taking a series of steps that set them on an exciting new path to renewed vigor and profitability.

Overcoming disruption

In normal economic times, this thesis might have limited economic value. Traditionally, the mature company’s role was to preserve its advantages, not take on new risks. However, in this era of fast-paced global change, a defensive game is often no longer an option. Companies in many sectors find themselves threatened by disruptive competition. The era of aging gracefully is over; in industry after industry, Roland Berger’s Partners argue, only the entrepreneurial will survive.

In this short book, the Partners examine how the leaders of a few exceptional organizations revived their firm’s latent entrepreneurial instincts and built an exciting new business out of a threatened older franchise. Re-entrepreneuring involves the powerful interplay of two seemingly opposing forces: the strengths, assets and experience of a large established organization that have been honed over time with the entrepreneurial mindset characteristic of start-ups. Readers will learn how through this process, which the Partners dub re-entrepreneuring, companies in a variety of industries have turned themselves around.

In case after case, the authors show, obsolescence is a choice. By seeing the world through fresh eyes and giving employees the freedom to re-imagine their business, a company can open itself up to an exciting new era.

" Companies in many sectors find themselves threatened by disruptive competition. The era of aging gracefully is over; in industry after industry, Roland Berger’s Partners argue, only the entrepreneurial will survive. "
Portrait of Stefan Schaible

Stefan Schaible

Senior Partner, Global Managing Partner
Frankfurt Office, Central Europe

Chapter overview

The book contains a total of ten chapters. To give you a first impression, we have summarized them for you.

Step back

Chapter 1: Reculer pour mieux sauter

Companies often lose their way over time, and seldom find it again. The systems managers put in place to preserve and protect the core business begin to ossify, blocking adaptation to a changed business climate. Re-entrepreneuring breaks that downward spiral by taking a step back to take a good look not only at where you are but where you’ve been. In this chapter, we look at how the travel giant TUI reinvented itself several times in its first hundred years, evolving from a bus tour company in the 1930s to a packaged tour company in the 1950s and in the early 2000s, to a provider of specialized tours targeting travelers with particular interests.

Restarting
Restructuring
Re-form
Re-conceiving
Re-model
Re-organize
Re-envision
Own the future
Epilogue
Download first chapter
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Book

Re-entrepreneuring

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A new book from Roland Berger shows how mature companies can bring back the energy of their startup days and achieve a new era of prosperity.

Published October 2018. Available in
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Portrait of Stefan Schaible
Senior Partner, Global Managing Partner
Frankfurt Office, Central Europe