An enterprise is any organized effort intended to return a profit or provide a service or product within an economy. It is about entrepreneurial startups and operational expansions. It is about individuals as well as groups reaching for a higher level of excellence. Ultimately a successfully operating enterprise creates jobs and community wealth within an economy. Enterprise and economic development go together. There is an Enterprise Development Section in the .network Resource Center. There you will find this paragraph repeated with words and phrases linked for more information. Also, there are other links to resources for learning more.

Enterprise developers are risk takers. They are decision makers. They are entrepreneurs. Enterprise developers are leaders of small businesses and fast-growing companies. They are employers as well as independent workers who create and maintain their own jobs. In the latter case, enterprise developers may run nanocorps. They are within the ranks of executives and managers working for large corporations. They are the people who run non-profits.

Enterprise developers think in terms of business strategy, a term defined in the Enterprise and Economic Development Glossary. The Art of War, a writing of the 6th century BC attributed to Sun Tzu, was translated by R.L. Wing as The Art of Strategy (1988). One Sun Tzu's four classifications of obstacles that business strategist face, is dealing with intra-personal issues within themselves. Enterprise developers control the interactions within the networks they form to move forward with projects.Wing wrote: Winning strategists are certain of triumph before seeking a challenge. Page down to more comments about the four classifications of obstacles to operating with strategic effectiveness. The comments show links for expanding information.

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Raymond E. Floyd wrote in the September 1992 issue of Industrial Management that the ancient Chinese guide for today's business strategists, The Art of War, has useful insights that can help decision makers, such as enterprise developers, overcome obstacles. Specifically, Floyd pointed out that Sun Tzu divided obstacles into four categories: intra-personal, inter-personal, environmental and organizational. These categories are briefly discussed below within the context of the enterprise and economic development process for which The Network provides resources. The title of Floyd's article: The art of war and the art of management.

Obstacles to making decisions about enterprise development:

(1) Intra-personal obstacles ... typically seen as those that exist inside the head. They are of one's own making. For example, the novice enterprise developer becomes emotionally attached to a hunch in such a way that the motivation to engage in risk management is set aside. Entrepreneurs need to be willing to take calculated risks but management is essential —mark the operative word: calculated. For managers intra-personal obstacles are of concern within teams, groups, and networks. Networks include resource and service providers.

The sports analogy, an occurrence of seeing what is about to happen in the mind and thinking it through in a flash, thus building confidence, is applicable for overcoming an intra-personal obstacle. A well conditioned motivation for success instantly feeds back filtered information drawn from experience and flashes understandings of one's capabilities.

(2) Interpersonal obstacles.. exist within the transaction space between people They block successful interactions. An applicable example of an interpersonal obstacle that stands in the way of enterprise and economic development within context of The Art of War is the polarization of labor and management that emerged from the Industrial Revolution and leads to strife.

Strife between labor and management as well as war arrived at a point in the 20th century where there is more lost than won. It was made clear that obstacles for true success cannot be removed in those ways. Politics, which to a great extent claims ownership of the enterprise and economic development process, failed to remove interpersonal obstacles but maintained position through, for example, the use of propaganda. Site selection, a sub-process of enterprise development, was in many cases simply a relocation process. On the other hand, places where positive, productive labor relations existed without interpersonal obstacles enjoyed the benefits of market and technology driven enterprise development.

(3) Environmental obstacles ... business decision makers understanding the terrain and knowing what it will take to traverse it. Successful progress depends on an accurate map and reliable intelligence. Gathering information begins when thinking about enterprise development first begins. It's at the tentative stage of a project. Skilled enterprise developers organize around what they understand about the environment they are about to enter with an understanding that risk is everywhere. They maintain their flow environmental intelligence by networking.

(4) Organizational obstacles.. exists to the extend that skills, expertise, experience, and material are kept away from an enterprise development project. Successful projects require teams and networks. The best organizations are set in place for achieving the specific goal. A business decision maker has to recognize the obstacle of finding something for an individual or group to do or keeping an enterprise operating when there is no productive purpose.

Peter Drucker, the highly regarded sage of modern management, said that ... innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. It is the same with organizing for enterprise development. Innovation is the instrument for overcoming organizational obstacles to a specific enterprise development process. The entrepreneur and the business decision maker as enterprise developer proceed in exactly the same manner to achieve success. The challenge that the enterprise developer often has is to find the springhead of innovation within a project team or a network of resource and service suppliers and then to organize with or around it.

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