The New Entrepreneurs

With a focus on a diverse group of Latino entrepreneurs in the Houston area, Valdez explores how class, gender, race, and ethnicity shape Latino entrepreneurs' capacity to succeed in business in the United States.

At a time of unprecedented change in the way we work, the editors of Monocle are here to help us envision, create, and make a success of a new business or reboot an existing one. As we face a world that is undergoing unparalleled change, no area is more dynamic than business. To help us understand, navigate, and succeed in this new world, the team at Monocle brings together its unique knowledge of culture, politics, economics, and business. Featuring stories of people running enterprises on every scale, the inspirational tales in this book provide readers with insights into the challenges and joys of creativity and entrepreneurship. These unmatched case studies reveal, among many success stories, how leaders choose branding, hire teams, and design workspaces for today’s needs. Whether you are planning to make a life change, start a new business, or reinvigorate an existing one, The Monocle Book of Entrepreneurs is a resource for anyone who wants to make a difference in their work and life.

This is the book you will need if you are considering setting up your own business. It is aimed at the new business owner who has a lot of questions to ask. It has been written by a successful business owner and provides advice on what, and what not, to do. While it is not intended to be a global reference book it does provide the reader with practical answers to the issues they will come across everyday, and includes examples of successes and failures from both the US and U.K. perspectives.

Until Josiah Wedgwood, Britons ate from wood and pewter plates. Until Henry Heinz, women toiled over pickled foods. Until Michael Dell, few people owned a personal computer, let alone dreamed of buying one "built to order." According to business historian Nancy F. Koehn, these pathbreaking entrepreneurs shared a powerful gift: the ability to discern how economic and social change would affect consumer needs and wants. In Brand New, Koehn introduces us to six extraordinary leaders of brand creation who lived and worked during periods of widespread change: Josiah Wedgwood in the Industrial Revolution; Henry Heinz and Marshall Field in the Transportation and Communication Revolution; and Est?e Lauder, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, and Michael Dell in the Information Revolution. Through compelling and engaging profiles of these entrepreneurial visionaries, she reveals a provocative relationship between economic turbulence, household priorities, and company strategy that holds important lessons for today's brand builders. According to Koehn, these forward-thinking individuals understood the profound effects that socioeconomic change has on what customers want, have, and can afford as much as on what companies make-and were masters at exploiting the enormous business opportunities these demand-side shifts created. Indeed, the brands and companies created by these individuals have become such a part of everyday life that we've made them part of common speech: we pass the Heinz; eat off Wedgwood; order a Starbucks. Koehn draws from their diaries, correspondence, and official business records to demonstrate that these entrepreneurs were more than savvy marketers; they were institution builders. She shows how each used brand not as a logo, but as a vital strategic tool for creating best-of-class companies-and for building powerful organizational capabilities that supported their connections with customers and helped make new markets for their offerings. Distilling critical lessons for businesses operating in both the traditional and on-line worlds, Brand New will convince every entrepreneur of the remarkable power of brands to transform start-ups, gain competitive advantage, and change lives.

The action plan for building your entrepreneurial empire—one day at a time While every entrepreneur knows that the key to success is business growth, few ever see it happen. Why? Because they know how to plant seeds, but they don’t understand that the real work lies in helping that seed grow—which takes knowledge, persistence, and patience. The Entrepreneurs Book of Actions helps you develop the mindset of a true entrepreneur and provides manageable steps for making your business vision a reality. Informative, inspiring, and based on real-life, hard-earned lessons, it provides common-sense, daily exercises you can jump into on day one. Learn how to drive sustainable business growth by: * Breaking bad habits—and developing good ones * Managing your time and money more effectively * Hiring the right people for the right job * Minimizing the effort required to perform basic tasks * Motivating your staff to be mission-focused * Creating “free” time to feed your innovative side You’ll begin to see your business in a completely new way—with a sense of clarity and purpose. You’ll begin identifying the issues that really affect your business—not the ones that feed your anxiety. You’ll become the kind of leader other entrepreneurs look up to—calm, optimistic, driven. The Entrepreneurs Book of Actions will provide the direction you need to make the best use of your time, your energy, and your creativity. It’s not isn’t a quick-fix. It’s work. But it’s manageable, it’s proven effective—and it will pay off big.

ROAD TEST YOUR IDEA BEFORE YOU LAUNCH YOUR LEAN START-UP Thinking about starting a new business? Stop! Is there a genuine market for your idea? Do you really want to compete in that industry? Are you the right person to pursue it? No matter how talented you are or how much capital you have, if you’re pursuing a fundamentally flawed opportunity then you’re heading for failure. So before you launch your lean start-up, take your idea for a test drive and make sure it has a fighting chance of working. Now in its 4th Edition, The New Business Road Test is the essential handbook for anyone wanting to launch a start-up. The new and fully updated case studies – Ella's Kitchen, Whole Foods, eBay and more – and ‘seven domains’ framework will help you avoid impending disaster and enhance your chances of achieving your entrepreneurial dreams. This book will help you answer the live-or-die questions: Are the market and industry attractive? Does the opportunity offer both customer benefits as well as competitive and economic sustainability? Can you deliver the results you seek? The full text downloaded to your computer With eBooks you can: search for key concepts, words and phrases make highlights and notes as you study share your notes with friends eBooks are downloaded to your computer and accessible either offline through the Bookshelf (available as a free download), available online and also via the iPad and Android apps. Upon purchase, you'll gain instant access to this eBook. Time limit The eBooks products do not have an expiry date. You will continue to access your digital ebook products whilst you have your Bookshelf installed.

Have you wondered what goes on in the heads of entrepreneurs? What makes them tick? The New Age Entrepreneurs provides a peek into the lives of thirty successful entrepreneurs—including N.R. Panicker of Accel Ltd, Ramachandra Galla of Amaron, and M. Murali of Sri Krishna Sweets—who established flourishing businesses borne out of innovative ideas. These trailblazers delved into diverse industries, ranging from information technology to luxury hotels and Indian sweets. With snappy, insightful, and motivating tales—interspersed with interviews and vivid profiles—The New Age Entrepreneurs is a collection of vignettes of men who made their own rules and set standards for the rest of the industry to follow.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.