Extreme Entrepreneurship

EXTREME ENTREPRENEURSHIP: From war zones to jungles to slums to where capitalism is illegal, this book contains true stories of people making their startups work in some of the most challenging contexts. Written by an award-winning professor at a top-ranked entrepreneurship school based on his interviews with startup founders in some of the more than 120 countries he has visited, there are no Silicon Valley stories of free office perks here. Instead, you can expect to find uniquely inspiring stories and universal lessons about life and business from interesting people and places around the world. This book will provide you with: (1) life and business tips and inspiration, provided from a fresh perspective; (2) immediately actionable ideas, including intriguing ways of overcoming obstacles related to food, water, education, energy, the environment, employment, travel, startups, entrepreneurship, meeting people, and more; (3) insight into the mindsets of people who see and create opportunities and successfully execute to make the most of those opportunities; and (4) interesting background information on people and places around the world, providing a dose of context and entertainment. Whether it is a pioneering school for the differently-abled in Peru, or nurturing local food economies with solar mini-grids in Madagascar, or rainforest stewardship in Colombia and Suriname, or startups in the wake of genocide in Timor-Leste, or sparking the rebirth of a former industrial town in the United States, you will read here stories of folks tackling tough problems with few resources. Published in book format for the first time, the author expertly presents these stories and others in what can be described as a stylistic blend of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown and NPR’s How I Built This. Please read and enjoy!

As business schools expand their entrepreneurship programs and organizations seek people with entrepreneurial skills, it has become clear that the skills and mindset of an entrepreneur are highly valued in all business contexts. This latest edition of Entrepreneurial New Venture Skills continues to focus on helping students develop entrepreneurial skills, whether they seek to become entrepreneurs or employees. Focusing on the entrepreneurial start-up process, the third edition of Entrepreneurial New Venture Skills takes the reader through the steps of selecting, planning, financing, and controlling the new venture. The authors cover multiple forms of new ventures, as well as ways to utilize entrepreneurial skills in other contexts, encouraging students to engage with the material and apply it to their lives in ways that make sense for them. Skill development features include: Entrepreneurial profiles of small business owners Personal applications for students to apply questions to their new venture or a current business Global and domestic cases Elevator pitch assignments, which put students in the venture capitalist position Application exercises and situations covering specific text concepts Business plan prompts to help students construct a business plan over the course of a semester Featuring pedagogical tools like review questions and learning outcomes, and a full companion website that expands upon skill development and offers instructor resources, the third edition of Entrepreneurial New Venture Skills is the perfect resource for instructors and students of entrepreneurship.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

April J. Spivack and Alexander McKelvie present the development of the concept of entrepreneurship addiction, contributing to wider discussions of the ‘dark side’ of entrepreneurship. Focusing attention on mental health issues and neurodiversity among entrepreneurs, it offers insights into conflicting findings regarding entrepreneurial well-being.

The second title in the Extreme Series, Extreme Entrepreneur focuses on a unique breed of entrepreneur: the maverick risk-takers and rule-breakers whose innovations have earned them tremendous fortunes and rocketed entrepreneurship to dizzying new heights.

This book systematically compares the innovation and entrepreneurship education (IEE) in the United States, the United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, Croatia, Canada, South Korea, and China. The book invites the most distinguished professors of each country in this field to contribute. It provides a context analysis that can lead to greater insight into why and how IEE has become an important government agenda and an institutional priority in different country settings. Following the context, each chapter analyzes governmental policies and the guidance of entrepreneurship education in recent years. This book also analyzes the internal development and supporting system of IEE from an ecosystem perspective. Based on the comparison of case countries, the book puts forwards the common successful experience and the differentiation of IEE.

Entrepreneur Success Recipe was developed because of the sheer number of entrepreneurs that fail. Author Colin Sprake, having worked with 1,000s of them, saw the key ingredients that they were missing and knew that if entrepreneurs worked on those key ingredients, they would turn from strugglers into millionaires – no matter what industry they were in! Entrepreneur Success Recipe was developed over 3 decades of in the trenches entrepreneurship and offers an entrepreneur skill test in the beginning to let you know where you are at and what you have to learn to take yourself and your business to the next level!

They’re young, they’re brash,they’re smart—and they’re77-million strong. Generation Y is creating startups at anunprecedented rate, and their approach tobusiness is unlike anything you’ve seen.The generation described by the mediaas spoiled, entitled, even narcissistic, is provingthese notions false every day. Inspiredby the rock-star entrepreneurs of previousgenerations and driven by a burning desireto control their own destinies, GenY is rewritingthe entrepreneurial playbook one coolstartup at a time. Inc. magazine writer Donna Fenn interviewedmore than 150 young CEOs to learnwhat makes them tick. While upstarts aremotivated by similar aspirations of pastgenerations, their way of doing business isradically different—and it’s changing the wayeveryone must do business now. Upstarts examinesand analyzes this entrepreneurialrevolution to reveal eight critical lessons everyentrepreneur and marketer must learn.Fenn describes a generation of entrepreneursthat is highly collaborative and team-oriented.It’s quick and alert when it comes tonew technologies. It’s hell-bent on changingthe world. And it’s totally impatient with outmodedbusiness models. The sooner you adapt to the new way ofbusiness, the greater chance you have togrow and profit in the years ahead. Upstartsprovides key insight into: Building collaborative tribes Deploying technology to yourcompetitive advantage Disrupting the status quo Deconstructing the GenY market Generating branding buzz Adopting a social mission Inventing the workplace of the future Reinventing your company Misreading GenY companies could be thebiggest business mistake you ever make. Thisforward-looking book serves both as a headsupto the far-reaching changes coming yourway and as a detailed guide to meeting theresulting challenges. The upstarts are here to stay. Are you?