How Entrepreneurs Do What They Do

How entrepreneurs do what they do presents fourteen case studies of knowledge intensive entrepreneurship. The book focuses on ÔdoingÕ, in essence, what happens when entrepreneurs are engaging practically in venture creation processes. Case studies can be used as a key element in learning and understanding what really occurs, as well as for illustrating theoretical points. This insightful book provides a series of in-depth case studies of knowledge intensive entrepreneurship from different industries to elucidate relevant phenomena and topics. They focus upon the venture creation process, involving close interactions between the individual, the company, and the external eco-system and environment. The cases primarily provide a managerial perspective on the process, from the sources of ideas, through opportunities and strategies, to outcomes and interactions with external networks. This enriching book will be relevant to academics and practitioners, as well as advanced students. The suggestions for further reflections can be used as inspiration for class discussions, Master thesis projects, academic research projects or stimulating successful entrepreneurship.

The Founder's Dilemmas examines how early decisions by entrepreneurs can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, including quantitative data on almost ten thousand founders as well as inside stories of founders like Evan Williams of Twitter and Tim Westergren of Pandora, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.

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.

Learn the true process of a successful entrepreneur with Introduction to Entrepreneurship, 8/e International Edition Presenting the most current thinking in this explosive field, this renowned entrepreneurship text provides a practical, step-by-step approach that makes learning easy. Using exercises and case presentations, you can apply your own ideas and develop useful entrepreneurial skills. Cases and examples found throughout the text present the new venture creations or corporate innovations that permeate the world economy today. This book will be your guide to understanding the entrepreneurial challenges of tomorrow.

Reveals how companies like GE and Burberry have broken the corporate mould, and introduces us to entrepreneurs like Leila Velez, who started a multi-million hair-care company from her kitchen sink in Rio.

Four different types of ventures created by entrepreneurs are explored in What Do Entrepreneurs Create?: survival, lifestyle, managed growth and aggressive growth. The concept of a balanced venture portfolio is introduced to guide public policy formulation and the development of entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Secure venture capital? Easy. Getting a business up and running or pushing a brilliant product to the marketplace requires capital. For many entrepreneurs, a lack of start-up capital can be the single biggest roadblock to their dreams of success and fortune. Venture Capital For Dummies takes entrepreneurs step by step through the process of finding and securing venture capital for their own projects. Find and secure venture capital for your business Get your business up and running Push a product to the marketplace If you're an entrepreneur looking for hands-on guidance on how to secure capital for your business, the information in Venture Capital For Dummies gives you the edge you need to succeed.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE-PATRON PHILOSOPHER OF TODAY'S DISRUPTIVE ENTREPRENEURS His favorite personality was a "free spirit" an obsessed individual with a vision of the future and the will to make it so, a rebel who creates the future with childlike enthusiasm. Now, serial entrepreneur Dave Jilk and venture capitalist Brad Feld extract from Nietzsche a modern Art of War, connecting the dots to our high-tech business environment. Each quick, digestible chapter expands on a quote from Nietzsche to stimulate your thinking about a vital aspect of entrepreneurship, and stories from entrepreneurs help make the ideas concrete. Understand why hitting bottom might be the best thing that can happen, how your firm's "artistic style" can align your organization, and the role obsession plays in your success-and your definition of it. Glean insight and inspiration from every page of this surprising, approachable gem.