THE ENTREPRENEURIAL PERSONALITY 33changed, and employees felt increasingly empowered, product innova-
tion took off. The launch of new product lines was accelerated.
Employees started to experiment with better ways of satisfying their
customers. Both product and process innovation were on the rise but
so was customer satisfaction. Good corporate citizenship behavior
became the norm, with people going out of their way to help each
other be more effective in the organization. Market share increased,
and so did profi tability.
Mr. X struggled a long time with his need for power and prestige.
There was constant temptation to speed up the growth of the company.
He recognized that this was driven by his need to feel more powerful
and realized the danger of too rapid growth and overexpansion. For a
long period in the analysis he would oscillate between the grandiose
fantasy of building a conglomerate and his fears of it becoming too big.
At times, he felt like the mythological King Midas; everything he
touched seemed to turn to gold. But then he became anxious that
growth might endanger his relationship with his wife and ruin his
health. Being too conspicuous might also invite disaster. Others might
grow envious and spoil his success, as often happened while he was
growing up. His depression and his symptoms of physical illness might
return.
Gradually, however, he began to see the relationship between his
need to expand the company and certain key themes in his inner world.
This gave him an increased sense of freedom, of no longer being a pris-
oner of the past. His actions became more balanced. It also made for
more thoughtful decision - making. He stopped reading horoscopes when
deciding strategic moves. He became less impulsive when making deci-
sions in the company.
The entrepreneurial life cycle
Turning the Tables
This case study helps us to understand better the process entrepreneurs
go through to become the kinds of people they are. We have seen how
the entrepreneur emerges from childhood as a psychological risk - taker
subjected to a high degree of psychosocial risk. Through intrapsychic
transformation, original feelings of helplessness, dependency, and rejec-
tion are replaced by a proactive style in which power, control, and
autonomy become predominant issues. What used to be an inclination
toward submission and passivity becomes an active, more impulsive