Summary: Play Now: This episode is sponsored by The Agile PrepCast. Earn 37 PDUs:: Cornelius Fichtner and Richard Larson This interview with Richard Larson was recorded at the 2015 PMI Global Congress in Orlando, Florida. We discuss his paper and presentation "Entrepreneurial Business Analysis Practitioner" (Co-written with Elizabeth Larson). Here is the paper's introduction: Given both authors are entrepreneurs and have done extensive business analysis work, it seems logical for us to write about this topic. But, why bother? What possibly could be relevant about entrepreneurialism for a business analyst or project manager? For starters, entrepreneurship is an increasingly attractive career option within an organization and as a start-up, and is more and more viable with each passing year. Even if we are not interested in forming a start-up, the principles of entrepreneurship are becoming increasingly important for organizations to innovate and stay competitive. In this paper, we will explore several aspects of entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs and what it means for business analysis. Our firm belief is that by adopting a more entrepreneurial way of working, practitioners will be more effective and organizations will benefit. Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Cornelius Fichtner: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Project Management Podcast at www.pm-podcast.com. We are coming to you live from the Exhibit Hall here at the 2015 PMI Global Congress in Orlando, Florida at Disneyworld. And sitting next to me is Richard Larson from Watermark Learning. Hello, Richard. Richard Larson: Hello Cornelius, glad to be here. Cornelius Fichtner: Good morning. Good morning. Richard Larson: Good morning. Cornelius Fichtner: My first question to everybody at the congress is, what's coming our way next year? What do you see as a project management trend for 2016? What do our listeners have to be aware of? Richard Larson: Well, I think the trend has been brewing for awhile in terms of project managers being more business leaders rather than project implementers per se. And that you can see that happening with the new CCR changes from PMI in terms of real big emphasis on leadership. And so that, the presentation that I'm doing, we'll get into this question a bit later, I understand, but applies to project managers as much as business analysts in terms of being more entrepreneurial. And that's just one manifestation that the leadership trend. There are many others. There's speakers like my wife Elizabeth who’s going to be talking about innovation that’s certainly key and that's hot and how can we help the business succeed. Over and above, we're just doing our job as project implementers. Cornelius Fichtner: All right. Your talk is about Entrepreneurial Business Analysis Practitioners. Why did you choose this topic? What's your interest in this? Richard Larson: Well, it came together when I was asked to do a key note at a business analysis conference last fall in New Zealand. And we're talking about different topics like innovation, and they said, no, no, we're already been there, done that, which proves kind of interesting. They needed something beyond that, and they thought that an entrepreneurial element to it, knowing that I was an entrepreneur, having been running a company for 23 years, would know something about the topic, which is true. But then how can a business analyst or how can people practicing business analysis be more entrepreneurial in what they do? And so the talk kind of grew from that and I really got interested in it. And I have been writing a series of articles in BA Times and Project Times over the last year on this topic. And I hope to have an e-book with my wife Elizabeth being p
