Peter Drucker Entrepreneur Quotations

I'm a writer. I could not or would not ever run a business. I don't even have a secretary. And contrary to some of the stereotypes, entrepreneurs are not loners. I am.

Entrepreneurship rests on a theory of economy and society. The theory sees change as normal and indeed as healthy. And it sees the major task in society - and especially in the economy - as doing something different rather than doing better what is already being done. That is basically what Say, two hundred years ago, meant when he coined the term entrepreneur. It was intended as a manifesto and as a declaration of dissent: the entrepreneur upsets and disorganizes. As Joseph Schumpeter formulated it, his task is "creative destruction.

One has to make a decision when a condition is likely to degenerate if nothing is done.

Capital formation is shifting from the entrepreneur who invests in the future to the pension trustee who invests in the past.

People who need certainty are unlikely to make good entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing.

Management and entrepreneurship are only two different dimensions of the same task. An entrepreneur who does not learn how to manage will not last long. A management that does not learn to innovate will not last long.

[Entrepreneurship] is by no means hunch or gamble. But it also is not precisely science. Rather, it is judgment.

Planning is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Planning is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship.

Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. The act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.

Entrepreneurship is neither a science nor an art. It is a practice.

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.