The Ever-evolving Enterprise: Guidelines for Creating Your Company's Future

Corporate success in the years ahead will take more than fine-tuning existing operations. It will take more than piecemeal application of reactive, stopgap measures. The future of business will belong to executives who understand the multifaceted nature of change, who welcome innovation, think proactively, and have the courage to move ahead of the pack.

"Most managers," author Stephen C. Harper writes, "do not understand what is involved in transforming organizations." His book, The Ever-Evolving Enterprise: Guidelines for Creating Your Company's Future, is intended to remedy that, focusing on ten areas proactive business leaders must address as they guide their companies through everyday activities and into the future.

The book stresses the need for firms to evolve to remain in sync with an ever-changing marketplace. It explores the multifaceted nature of transformational leadership and offers specific guidelines, ideas, and techniques leaders can institute to seize new opportunities and develop innovative products and services that offer sustainable competitive advantages. But it also invites executives to take a closer look at how they lead their firms, promoting a fresh psychological framework that will keep business leaders—and their companies—anticipatory, perceptive, agile, innovative, results-oriented, and able to execute so that their visions become realities.

Stephen C. Harper, PhD, is the Progress Energy/Betty Cameron Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, NC. Dr. Harper is a best-selling author who has written numerous books on leadership and entrepreneurship. He was president of a consulting firm and three economic development organizations, has conducted hundreds of seminars for corporations and government agencies, and won numerous awards for his teaching, writing, and service.