Library venturing

Today, entrepreneurs are “predicting our future by inventing it”. This phenomenon is in response to the rapid economic growth and social change brought on by new technology and expanding world markets. Over the next fifty years, Americans may contemplate annual per capita income raising five to tenfold from the present $12,000 which our industrial society produces. The service economy will become more and more a knowledge or information economy. All institutions, public, private, for‐profit and not‐for‐profit, are changing or being changed. The economic value of knowledge is just being recognized. Libraries, as collections of books, are becoming value‐added information and knowledge centers. The present library world is confused by the apparent conflict between serving traditional scholastic and emerging business needs. There is great opportunity for service and profit to the imaginative library that organizes to provide the new forms of knowledge now available or being developed. Library systems need leaders with vision and the ability to negotiate major change — not administrators. Librarians as entrepreneurs must learn business. This includes venture management and finance. Available assistance includes: growing intrapreneurial understanding in large institutions; family and friends; ample private wealth seeking investment; new business incubators — many university sponsored; a maturing, amply funded venture capital industry; and rapidly spreading local ‘venture clubs’ organizing community resources for entrepreneurs.