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downturn, it may be necessary to do so to maintain at least
some progress.

To the Future

The global financial crisis that began in 2008 underscored the
increasingly interconnected nature of our world. While some
leaders and their citizenry might long for a more insulated or
even isolated existence, the reality is that we rise or fall together.
While the primary objective of corporate entrepreneurship at
the company level is to provide a potent path to sustainable,
meaningful growth, the macro implications are enormous.
As independent entrepreneurs continue to drive the “creative
destruction” described by Schumpeter in the early twentieth
century, globalizing corporations are increasingly joining the
race. And it is not a zero-sum game. Open innovation practices
are marrying the capabilities and resources of large enterprises
with the ingenuity, passion, and vision of researchers, inven-
tors, and entrepreneurs, both inside and outside corporations.
As companies respond to consumer needs in countries and
conditions around the world, entrepreneurial activity will
bring the power of commerce to bear not only on day-to-day
concerns but also on the most critical challenges facing human-
ity. The power of the market, sometimes nudged and cajoled
by government, focuses entrepreneurial energy on market
needs that might result in value for investors. There are few
more compelling opportunities for value creation than pro-
viding economically and environmentally sound energy for
global growth or eradicating disease and poverty. Nobel Peace
Prize winner Muhammad Yunus’s call for a new commitment
to what he calls “social business”—for-profit enterprises sus-
tained by workable business models, but whose primary mis-