'Success and adversity. Entrepreneurship in agricultural engineering, 1800-1939' in J Brown & M Rose (eds), Entrepreneurship, Networks and Modern Business

Notes:

Focuses on the entrepreneurship needed to build and sustain a large and important industry, focusing especially on two aspects: 1] exploiting technology to establish a reputation based on technical excellence and 2] building up marketing expertise internationally through networks of travelling salesmen, subsidiaries and agencies. Transcending these issues was the need to devise business strategies capable of dealing with fluctuating markets and overseas competition - 'the overriding skills of the entrepreneurs thus became identifying and preferably anticipating trends upon which policies of product development, and strategies of specialization or diversification, whether offensive or defensive, could be constructed' Has sections: the nature of the industry; growth of agricultural engineering; entrepreneurship in agricultural engineering; international competition and the restructuring of the industry, 1880-1939