BOOK REVIEW / The acquisition tide turns: 'Break-out: Life Beyond the Corporation' - Sara Williams: Hamish Hamilton, 18.99

THE Polish poet and aphorist Stanislaw Lec said in Unkempt Thoughts 'You will always find some Eskimos ready to instruct the Congolese on how to cope with heatwaves'. Sara Williams' new book, which is an important addition to the current crop of business texts, makes the quotation but misses the point - the aphorism scores in this context because it neatly caricatures the corporation.

The entrepreneur may fail, through lack of funding, bad luck, competitive pressure, economic conditions, or loss of control, but he will understand his product and market and will be meticulously focused upon them. Corporations, however, particularly diversified ones with overblown head offices, tend to be long on control and short on product, market judgement and instinct.

Sara Williams rightly discusses the downfall of Coloroll. It simply bought too many companies, interfered with them too much and understood them too little. Release the Denby Pottery Company from the Coloroll liquidators and - bingo] - its management makes a business of Denby that the Coloroll people themselves would never have found.

Others diverted management time from reliable core businesses to start-ups, as, for example, poor John Menzies and its Early Learning Centres debacle in the US.

There is a movement towards polarising investment in specialist businesses that many of us believe will become a feature of business life in Britain, and Sara Williams' book makes the point well. The generalist manager, whose career satisfactions derive mainly from corporate politics, safety of tenure and security of remuneration, makes a poor candidate for other people's money when the chips are down and a buyout is in the air.

Business and business managers are best when specialist. Shareholders are incomparably better served by boards of directors who stick to their last. Widget makers should make their profits from making widgets, and all those profits should then be returned to the shareholders, among whom the staff should be as highly represented as possible, preferably to the point where they have the largest ownership bloc.

Widget maker managers have no right without the permission of their owners to decide that instead of returning the widget profits to the owners, they want to use them to finance a travel shop start-up or the purchase of a lollipop factory.

Groups cannot understand many different businesses in depth, and too many in the past decade have been run for the fun of the management.

Careers have been built on hyperactive acquisition programmes, and yet the irony is that no so-called strategic acquisitions work for the acquiring party. Synergistic benefits, like the bluebird, have never actually existed. Marks & Spencer, the greatest of all our corporations, has announced that it has no intention of buying anything or anybody else for the rest of this decade. How right it is.

And with all the bustle shareholders have been told as little as possible, and, weakly led by the professional investing community, have too often put up with it.

Too few boards have had the courage to keep their management doing what they actually understand and know how to profit from. Too few of the staff in these corporations have been rewarded on the profit performance of their divisions alone.

It has been a dispiriting scene, but the tide is turning, and Sara Williams' book is topical and timely. There will be more breakouts and we are lucky that we now have a venture investment industry wiser after the experiences of the past decade that is of sufficient width and depth to give what is needed.

Corporations will divest and demerge as boards strengthen, and develop the courage to pin management to core businesses. Management buyouts will multiply, with all the moral and efficiency spin-offs these bring in staff ownership and staff reward.

I hope Sara Williams' book will be widely read by all these prospective entrepreneurs. There is good advice here - practical, well-researched and competent. There is also encouragement, but the book talks balance and caution.

The entrepreneur's life is full of rewards - financial, of course, but also comradeship, shared danger and challenge. The personal risks are profound, however, and only those with strong nerves should join the fray.