From spotting - to sustaining the window of opportunity

Modern societies are increasingly dependent on entrepreneurship and innovation to develop their competitiveness and wealth. In the agenda for today's development of the competence of innovation and entrepreneurship is paramount and this is also one major objective for the educational sector. The noticeable outset is however, that the vast majority of entrepreneurship and innovation education has its focus on business plans and the establishment of new companies - spotting the window of opportunity.

We contest that the creating of sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship - or a sustainable business to the entrepreneur should be given greater focus. The educational system must secure unique sustainable capabilities and ideas in the entrepreneurs business otherwise the society and the entrepreneurs will only stay shortly in business (Knudsen & Lindgren, 2004). However, there is relative little in the literature on the sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship. The question being, how can entrepreneurs articulate and embed innovation and entrepreneurship into sustainable businesses accompanying customers innovation process and become leaders of the customers innovation process - sustaining the window of opportunity.

This paper reports on a case study of 4 entrepreneurs and their performance of customer process innovation leadership - entrepreneurial companies and their challenge to become sustainable businesses. In particular, it emphasizes the customer innovation process and the entrepreneurs effort to join and become leader of this innovation process. The paper concludes with a definition of customer process innovation leadership and some comments on the success criteria of customer process innovation leadership, transferring this approach to the education of entrepreneurs, and on research issues arising from the new approach.