The Television Entrepreneurs

With business seemingly everywhere on television, from the risks of the retail and restaurant trade to pitching for investment or competing to become the next 'apprentice', The Television Entrepreneurs draws upon popular business-oriented shows such as The Apprentice and Dragons' Den to explore the relationship between television and business. Based on extensive interviews with key industry and business figures and drawing on new empirical research into audience perceptions of business, this book examines our changing relationship with entrepreneurship and the role played by television in shaping our understanding of the world of business. The book identifies the key structural shifts in both the television industry and the wider economy that account for these changing representations, whilst examining the extent to which television's developing interest in business and entrepreneurial issues is simply a response to wider social and economic change in society. Does a more commercial and competitive television marketplace, for instance, mean that the medium itself, through a particular focus on drama, entertainment and performance, now plays a key role in re-defining how society frames its engagements with business, finance, entrepreneurship, risk and wealth creation? Mapping the narratives of entrepreneurship constructed by television and analysing the context that produces them, The Television Entrepreneurs investigates how the television audience engages with such programmes and the possible impact these may have on public understanding of the nature of business.

With business seemingly everywhere on television, from the risks of the retail and restaurant trade to pitching for investment or competing to become the next 'apprentice', The Television Entrepreneurs draws upon popular business-oriented shows such as The Apprentice and Dragons' Den to explore the relationship between television and business. Based on extensive interviews with key industry and business figures and drawing on new empirical research into audience perceptions of business, this book examines our changing relationship with entrepreneurship and the role played by television in shaping our understanding of the world of business. The book identifies the key structural shifts in both the television industry and the wider economy that account for these changing representations, whilst examining the extent to which television's developing interest in business and entrepreneurial issues is simply a response to wider social and economic change in society. Does a more commercial and competitive television marketplace, for instance, mean that the medium itself, through a particular focus on drama, entertainment and performance, now plays a key role in re-defining how society frames its engagements with business, finance, entrepreneurship, risk and wealth creation? Mapping the narratives of entrepreneurship constructed by television and analysing the context that produces them, The Television Entrepreneurs investigates how the television audience engages with such programmes and the possible impact these may have on public understanding of the nature of business.

According to the sociologist C. Wright Mills in his 1951 book, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, the “new entrepreneur” was a lone wolf able to succeed in post–World War II corporate America by elusively meandering through various institutions. During this time, anthology writers such as Rod Serling, Reginald Rose, and Paddy Chayefsky achieved a level of creativity that has rarely been equaled on television since. Yet despite their success, anthology writers still needed to evade the constraints and censorship of 50s television in order to stay true to their creative powers and political visions. Thus they worked as new entrepreneurs who adapted their more controversial scripts for the Hollywood, Broadway, and book publishing industries. Even after the television networks cancelled their prestigious anthology series at the end of the 50s, the most resilient writers were able to redefine what it meant to be entrepreneurs by launching cutting-edge shows such as The Twilight Zone and The Defenders that are still popular today. The New Entrepreneurs includes detailed textual analysis of legendary, sometimes hard-to-find, television anthology scripts that have received only cursory glances in television history until now. Ebook Edition Note: All images have been redacted.

The Great Recession threatened the well-being of tens of millions of Americans, dramatically weakened the working class, hollowed out the middle class, and strengthened the position of the very wealthy. Against this backdrop, the hit reality show Shark Tank premiered in 2009. Featuring ambitious entrepreneurs chasing support from celebrity investors, the show offered a version of the American Dream that still seemed possible to many, where a bright idea and a well-honed pitch could lift a bootstrap business to new heights of success. More than a decade later, Shark Tank still airs regularly on multiple networks, and its formula has sparked imitators everywhere, from elite universities to elementary school classrooms. In Entertaining Entrepreneurs, Daniel Horowitz shows how Shark Tank's version of entrepreneurship disguises and distorts the opportunities and traps of capitalism. Digging into today's cult of the entrepreneur, Horowitz charts its rise from the rubble of economic crisis and its spread as a mainstay of American culture, and he explores its flawed view of what it really takes to succeed in business. Horowitz offers more than a look at one television phenomenon. He is the perfect guide to the portrayal of entrepreneurship in business school courses, pitch competitions, popular how-to books, and scholarly works, as well as the views of real-world venture capitalists.

Entrepreneurial finance is a discipline that studies financial resource mobilization, resource allocation, risk moderation, optimization in financial contracting, value creation, and value monetization within the context of entrepreneurship. However, without proper strategic consideration the discipline is incomplete. This book examines how the activity of entrepreneurial finance can be enhanced via a concentration on value creation and through improved strategic decision-making. The most unique feature of the book is its focus on value creation. For entrepreneurs, value creation is not a one-off activity, but rather a continuous cycle of incremental improvements across a wide range of business activities. Entrepreneurial value creation is described in four comprehensive stages: value creation, value measurement, value enhancement, and value realization, referred to as the C-MER model. This book focuses on what creates value rather than merely presenting value creation in a straight accounting framework. At the same time, deliberate and tactical planning and implementation ensure that the firm does not ignore the components necessary for it to survive and flourish.Vigorous strategic deliberations maximize the entrepreneurial firm’s chances of making the right business decisions for the future, enable the firm to manage its available financial and non-financial resources in the most optimal manner, ensure that the necessary capital is secured to progress the development of the firm to its desired development level, and build value. While financial considerations are important, the field of strategic entrepreneurial finance represents a fusion of three disciplines: strategic management, financial management, and entrepreneurship. This orientation represents a natural evolution of scholarship to combine specific domains and paradigms of naturally connected business disciplines and reflects the need to simultaneously examine business topics from different perspectives which may better encapsulate actual entrepreneurial practices.

Building Successful and Sustainable Film and Television Businesses provides a truly cross-national, comparative dialogue that is vital to the field of media industry studies today. It presents an overview of the film and television sectors in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, drawing together their common elements.

"In 2007, with the advent of the Great Recession, tens of millions of Americans faced challenges that threatened their economic and psychological well-being. Central to this recession were the threats to the nexus between family and work, with many forces hollowing out the middle class and greatly weakening the health of the working class. Against this backdrop, the hit reality show Shark Tank premiered in 2009 and provided a version of the 'American Dream' that was modest and even tangible. In a time of economic upheaval, the show has offered visions of ambitious entrepreneurs chasing after this dream, often successfully so. In a time of dystopian circumstances, the show has offered its audience utopian pleasures. Cultural historian Daniel Horowitz ties these two threads together, observing that it is no coincidence that Shark Tank launched when the effects of the Great Recession were widely felt and provides a window into the ways mass media explains the opportunities, traps, and dynamics of capitalism. He examines the pervasive popularity of the cult of the entrepreneur and digs into the entrepreneurial culture genre to explain just how this particular manifestation of capitalist culture distorts economic reality and affects the public's sense of what's possible in the 'American Dream' today"--