Fundamentals For Becoming A Successful Entrepreneur From Business Idea To Launch

Description
During this brief file around fundamentals for becoming a successful entrepreneur from business idea to launch.

Praise for Fundamentals for Becoming
a Successful Entrepreneur
“Most books on new venture creation are relentlessly performative, giving
guidance on how to complete a business plan. Brännback and Carsrud
take a different approach. Adopting the voice of an experienced and
wise mentor, they guide the would-be entrepreneur/new venture creator
through the start-up process, emphasizing what they need to know and
why they need to know it. Engaging and scholarly without being dry and
demystifying the start-up process, this is a must-read for the manager/
employee interested in entrepreneurship as a career option.”
— Professor Richard Harrison, Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation,
University of Edinburgh Business School, Edinburgh, UK
“Brännback and Carsrud present an engaging and wide-ranging
approach to starting and growing businesses that covers context,
mindset, and the type of behaviors necessary for being entrepreneurial.
The authors also draw from a global selection of examples to show
the universality of many entrepreneurial practices along with a set a
recommended exercises to help the reader on their way.” 
— Professor Patricia Greene, Paul T. Babson Chair in Entrepreneurial
Studies, Babson College, Wellesley, MA
“Finally a book on entrepreneurship for the rest of us. A book not
bound by the myths of the Silicon Valley, but rather a book that speaks
to the entrepreneurial spirit in all of us. Brännback and Carsrud have
put together a very practical book that is perfect for students, aspiring
entrepreneurs or ‘any person with a desire to pursue an opportunity
and to achieve a goal.’ This is a book for real people looking to create
real businesses and real careers that meet their goals, not create mythical
‘ventures.’ This book is going on the syllabus.”
— David L. Deeds, Ph.D., Sandra Schulze Professor of Entrepreneurship,
Opus College of Business, The University of St. Thomas,
Minneapolis, MN
“Reading this book was a valuable refresher to my MBA coursework—and
a reminder of some of my many mistakes. If you are considering starting
your own business, save yourself time and money by reading this first!”
— Chris Jarvis, author of Wealth Secrets of the Affluent and founder of
Jade Risk
This page intentionally left blank
Fundamentals for
Becoming a
Successful
Entrepreneur
From Business Idea to
Launch and Management
Malin Brännback
Alan Carsrud
Publisher: Paul Boger
Editor-in-Chief: Amy Neidlinger
Acquisitions Editor: Charlotte Maiorana
Editorial Assistant: Olivia Basegio
Cover Designer: Chuti Prasertsith
Managing Editor: Kristy Hart
Project Editor: Elaine Wiley
Copy Editor: Cenveo® Publisher Services
Proofreader: Cenveo Publisher Services
Indexer: Cenveo Publisher Services
Manufacturing Buyer: Dan Uhrig
© 2016 by Malin Brännback and Alan Carsrud
Published by Pearson Education, Inc.
Old Tappan, New Jersey 07675
For information about buying this title in bulk quantities, or for special sales opportunities
(which may include electronic versions; custom cover designs; and content particular to your
business, training goals, marketing focus, or branding interests), please contact our corporate
sales department at [email protected] or (800) 382-3419.
For government sales inquiries, please contact [email protected].
For questions about sales outside the U.S., please contact [email protected].
Company and product names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of
their respective owners.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, with-
out permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing November 2015
ISBN-10: 0-13-396681-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-396681-7
Pearson Education Ltd.
Pearson Education Australia PTY, Ltd.
Pearson Education Singapore, Pte. Ltd.
Pearson Education Asia, Ltd.
Pearson Education Canada, Ltd.
Pearson Educacio? de Mexico, S.A. de C.V.
Pearson Education—Japan
Pearson Education Malaysia, Pte. Ltd.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015950136
Contents
Introduction Why This Book, What It Is All About,
and Who We Are. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi
The Why . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
The What . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
The Who. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvi
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship? . . . . 1
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
The Entrepreneur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Entrepreneurial Dreams and Their Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
There Is No One Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Collective Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Why Entrepreneurship Became Important . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .6
Challenging Assumptions—Entrepreneurship Is for All . . . . . . . .7
Entrepreneurial Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
National Innovation Systems for Entrepreneurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Incubators and Accelerators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Entrepreneurs: Made or Born . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Who Is an Entrepreneur? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
The Entrepreneurial Personality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Entrepreneurial Mindset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Defining Entrepreneurship: It All Depends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16
Opportunity Recognition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Entrepreneurial Goals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Different Goals for Different Folks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Other Definitional Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
The Self-Employed as Entrepreneurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
The Context for Self-Employed Entrepreneurs. . . . . . . . . . .22
A False Dichotomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Do Goals Differentiate?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
A Mini-Case Example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Opportunity and the Entrepreneur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29
v
vi
Contents
Advanced Exercises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31
Chapter 2 What Is Being Successful: Well It All Depends. . . 33
Why Examine Success?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Case Example from Finland and Sweden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Defining Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Defining Failure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
Measurement Issues in Defining Success (and Failure) . . . . . . . .39
Success in the Entrepreneurial Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
How Some Firm Founders See Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
How Entrepreneurship Researchers View Success . . . . . . . . . . . .42
An Ancient Narrative on Obtaining Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
Success and Opportunity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44
Tying Success to Entrepreneurial Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
Is Success Wealth? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46
The True Secret to Success: Networking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Rules for Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
Finally, Success Is Having Fun. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
Case Example from Italy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
Chapter 3 Getting a Good Idea and Making It Work. . . . . . . 57
Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57
The Idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57
Idea Generation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58
Concept Benefits: Needs, Wants, and Fears. . . . . . . . . . . . . .59
Examples of Needs, Wants, and Fears. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61
Thinking out of the Box: Not Everything Needs a Hammer . . .62
The Role of Creativity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63
The Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
The Conceptual Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66
A Case Example of the Conceptual Event . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
The Entrepreneur as a Dreamer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .68
Generating Ideas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
Creating a Viable Business Concept and Business Model . .71
vii
Contents
Looking for Trends and Counter Trends as Concept
Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
Brainstorming: The Good and The Ugly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74
Timing: It Is Not First to Market . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74
Designing a Concept for Profitability and Growth . . . . . . . . . . . .75
Building a Viable Business Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
More Thoughts on Concept Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78
Some Commentary on Franchises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79
The Concept Feasibility Worksheet Exercise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80
Exercise: Can You Describe the Concept? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .82
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84
Chapter 4 The Basics About Marketing
You Have to Know . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85
Why Know Your Market? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86
What Is Marketing?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
Basic Marketing Terminology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
Marketing Research: Doing the Work Upfront . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91
Market Research: Start Personally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92
Examples of Walking Around Research. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
Developing Effective Marketing Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97
Mobile Devices and Marketing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99
The Internet: The Best and Worst for a Venture . . . . . . . . . .99
Using the Internet and Cell Phone Apps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Selling: The Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Typical Problems in Selling Anything . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Selling to the Internet Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Marketing in the Social Media Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Advertising. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Public Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Branding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Chapter 5 It Is All About Building a Better Mousetrap:
Product and Service Development. . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Product/Service Innovation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
viii
Contents
Entrepreneurs Versus Inventors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Stage-Gate Model of Product Development . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Using Stage-Gate Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Types of Innovation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Focus Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Innovation Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
To Innovate or Not: That Is the Big Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Commercialization Is Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Defining New: In the Eye of the Beholder . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Building on the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Reinventing an Industry’s Products: Examples. . . . . . . . . 127
E-Commerce: Using Innovation in Marketing and
Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Industry Change as Opportunity for Product/Development . . 130
Examples of Industrial Change Fostering New Models . . 130
Spotting New Trends for New Products/Services . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Basic Conditions for Successful Products and Services . . . . . . 133
Case Study of New Product Development in a New Venture. . 134
Patents, Trade Secrets, and Copyrights. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Exercise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Chapter 6 Finding Team Members and Building
an Entrepreneurial Organization. . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Building the Venture One Person at a Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
The Entrepreneurial Team. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Other Issues to Consider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Outsourcing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Finding New Employees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Big Hiring Errors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Characteristics of a Good Hire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
A Mini-Case Example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Whom to Hire or Not, Whom to Fire or Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Saying “No” to an Applicant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Firing an Employee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
To Be a Family Firm or Not to Be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
What Is Firm Owning Family? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
ix
Contents
Family Goals Impact Hiring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Long-Term Impact of Hiring Family Members . . . . . . . . 156
Compensation, Benefits, and Stock Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Building an Entrepreneurial Team Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
A Line Structure for Entrepreneurial Teams. . . . . . . . . . . 159
Project Approach to an Entrepreneurial
Team Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Informal Structure: Key to a Successful
Entrepreneurial Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
New Firm Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Legal Structure Decisions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Final Thoughts on Entrepreneurial Management. . . . . . . . . . . 165
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Chapter 7 Everything You Really Need to Know About
Entrepreneurial Finance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Entrepreneurial Finance: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Building an Entrepreneurial Financial Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
Entrepreneurial Finance: Not Just Venture
Capital and IPO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Building a Sustainable Revenue Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Cash Flow: A Numerical Scorecard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Determining Cash-Flow Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Timing and Cash Flow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Money Comes in Four Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Finding Money and Investors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
More Money Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
The Myth of Needing Deep Pockets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Understanding Investors and Bankability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Debt Financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Banks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Venture Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Angel Investors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
What Investors Look for in Any Venture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Bootstrap Financing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Advantages to Bootstrapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
x
Contents
Crowd Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Chapter 8 How to Grow or Not to Grow Your Venture:
That Is the Management Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Growing Your Venture: An Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
What Is Business Growth? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Developing a Workable Growth Strategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Growth and Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Mini-Case on Growth by Replication. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Describing Growth Versus Defining Growth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Some Descriptions and Issues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Growth and Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Growth as Metamorphosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Exercise. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Chapter 9 Planning: Should You, When Do You, and How
Do You? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Overview of Plans and Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Why Plan?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Hooked on a Feeling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
When Do You Plan?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
How Long Will It Take?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
For Whom Do You Plan? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
What Goes into a Business Plan?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Detail Content of a Written Business Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232
Executive Summary Content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Marketing Plan Content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
About Competition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
Management and Organizational Plan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Financial Plan Content. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
General Comments Concerning Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Final Words on Planning and Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
Mini-Case on Chocolate Pralines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
xi xi
Introduction
Why This Book, What It Is All About,
and Who We Are
The Why
It is always good to begin at the beginning. First of all we have long
loved the field of entrepreneurship. Since 2013 we had wanted to write
a new book aimed primarily at would-be entrepreneurs. Then in 2014
we were approached by Charlotte Maiorana, a long-time friend and edi-
tor in the publishing world. She asked us if we would consider writing
a book for Pearson. She was scouting for a book on entrepreneurship
aimed at the would-be entrepreneur, the MBA student, or an executive
looking for a career change. She was familiar with many of our more
research-oriented books done for other publishers. She also knew of
an earlier professional book we had done aimed at the individuals con-
sidering starting a new venture. Hers was a challenge that we willingly
accepted as we felt most of what was available to the reader was either
way too academic, or aimed at undergraduate students as a textbook, or
too highly focused on technology entrepreneurship to the detriment of
other areas in which entrepreneurship occurs. We also felt that much of
what was available in book form did not reflect the current contexts in
which most would-be entrepreneurs exist nor did they reflect the latest
trends in marketing and finance. We thus accepted her challenge and
this book is the result.
Unlike many individuals, especially academics, who have written books
on entrepreneurship, we have actually started ventures so we have a per-
spective different from many of our colleagues and other individuals
writing on the topic. Through all this endeavor to write this book, we
have been joined together by our mutual love for entrepreneurship and
our profound respect for the many entrepreneurs we have met around
xii
Introduction
the world. The area of entrepreneurship has been our personal passion
as teachers, researchers, consultants, and entrepreneurs. We hope in this
book that we can bring to the reader a sense of the excitement of creat-
ing a new venture, the joy of making your first sale, the challenge of
hiring staff, the pains of growing, the fear of failure, the agony of plan-
ning, and the ultimate satisfaction when you look at what you have cre-
ated as an entrepreneur. This is a journey, like none other. We hope, in
the following pages, you will like the adventure we are suggesting you
take to become a successful entrepreneur. Remember one of the joys of
becoming an entrepreneur is that sometimes you cannot only challenge
the rules, but sometimes also get a chance to break them. As Anglican
Bishop Alan Wilson has noted:
If nobody ever experimented with going ahead of the rules, the
rules would never change and that’s the evolutionary process. . . .
One of the important reasons we are able to do this book is all of the
entrepreneurs and business owning families with whom we have worked
over the years. They have shown us how much entrepreneurship has
evolved over the last three decades. We want to thank them for the real-
ity and practicality they have provided to our thinking. Likewise, we
also owe a great deal to our many students around the world who have
gone on to create a wide variety of firms and/or to teach entrepreneur-
ship. Much of the research work that underpins this book is not just our
own, but also the work of hundreds of our colleagues who have built the
academic foundation of this field since we first entered it over 30 years
ago. Without their research and insights, this book would be just a col-
lection of old wives tales.
To keep this book from being a boring academic tome, we have chosen not
to cite every piece of research work that is meaningful (and useful) in the
field. We owe a lot to the research studies that can be found in the primary
journals in the field: Journal of Small Business Management, Entrepreneur-
ship: Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship
and Regional Development, Journal of Small Business Economics, Family
Business Review, and Journal of Enterprising Culture. We realize how much
this field has grown since we first entered it. Today there are over 100 aca-
demic journals in the field and thousands of universities around the world
with programs and courses in entrepreneurship.
xiii
Introduction
No institution has influenced the field more than a 35-year-old research
conference focused on the field. Thus we want to acknowledge the Bab-
son College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC), which
has long been the place where the best research and new theories have
been presented. In fact, this book is being wrapped up while at the 2015
BCERC meeting in Boston. We are also indebted to the International
Council on Small Business, the oldest professional organization for those
interested in entrepreneurship, which founded the oldest journal in the
field over 50 years ago and remains a significant source of information
on entrepreneurship of a small business management. These groups are
among the academic foundation stones for this book.
Next, we feel we must acknowledge the financial support of the follow-
ing organizations. First we want to thank the Kauffman Foundation of
Kansas City, Missouri, then The Åbo Akademi Foundation, and finally
TEKES (The Finnish National Technology Agency) for their support to
some of our work over the years. Finally, we want to thank our families
(and pets) for their support to our efforts and the reality check they
constantly provide us when it comes to what is important in life. This
reminds us to say every successful entrepreneur will have to constantly
deal with balancing work-life issues.
The What
We will begin this book by covering in Chapter 1 on what entrepreneur-
ship is and its various roles in world’s economy. We look as well at its
historical and philosophical underpinnings. We then discuss some of
the characteristics of an entrepreneur and the various contexts in which
entrepreneurial behavior occurs. This includes some discussion on vari-
ous theories about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial behavior. We do
this because we believe challenging your preconceived assumptions with
research-based theory will be useful. Using both mini-cases and short
vignettes, we provide examples of some of those characteristics and the
importance of acting upon the intention to become an entrepreneur.
Finally, we provide you with some exercises to do.
In Chapter 2 on fundamentals we have a lengthy discussion on what
is success and what it means to become a successful entrepreneur.
This includes looking simply beyond making money to helping you,
xiv
Introduction
the reader, to develop your own personal definition of success for the
venture. Using a mini-case and several short vignettes, we explore the
various meanings of both success and failure in a new venture. We also
give you some exercises in the chapters, which we hope will encourage
you to action. Sometimes taking action will bring success, and at other
times they will bring failure. We try to make it plain that failure does not
mean the end of becoming an entrepreneur, but that is only a part of the
learning process of creating a new venture. To us, motivation is a key to
being a successful entrepreneur and knowing yourself. In this a key task
is goal setting, both short and long term.
In Chapter 3 we get to the “core” of the new venture creation process. We
discuss how you find a good idea and how to exploit an opportunity to
create a new venture. We think this is often the most underappreciated
aspect of the process. While a poor idea with a great team pushing it
can sometimes be a viable business, the better option is a good-to-great
idea being led by a great entrepreneurial team. To achieve this business
concept requires knowing not only what is happening in the external
environment but also in terms of what you bring to the venture as the
would-be entrepreneur. We discuss a variety of topics including creativ-
ity and innovation, and provide you with some examples via mini-cases
and examples.
Moving on Chapter 4, we discuss everything we think you ought to know
about marketing initially. You will need marketing to develop your prod-
ucts and services in terms of characteristics that customers want. We will
direct you to understand your market in terms of their needs, wants, and
fears. Using a variety of examples, including cases, we talk about how an
entrepreneur needs to do market research and effective and inexpensive
methods to do this work. We also discuss the feared topic of “how to
sell,” something most books on entrepreneurship ignore but which we
feel is exceptionally important. If you are afraid to ask for the cash, or the
contract, you are going to need to get over that fear.
Next we turn to a more detailed discussion in Chapter 5 on your core
business concept in terms of what is your product or service and how
to develop them. We discuss the importance of using marketing data in
the development of your product/service regardless if you are doing a
piece of technology or creating a new dish for your eating establishment.
Developing a prototype is now so much easier with 3D printers and
xv
Introduction
menu testing. We think this area, well known in technology entrepre-
neurship in engineering schools, is a core skill every entrepreneur needs
to know and practice in an ongoing basis. Once again we provide you
with some mini-case examples.
Then we turn to a discussion in Chapter 6 on fundamentals of building
an entrepreneurial organization. We include the seemingly boring, but
highly critical, topics of hiring, firing, and retaining your entrepreneurial
team and employees. We discuss how organizational structure is built
in a new firm, including the pros and cons of outsourcing. We then
turn our attention to why every entrepreneur needs to have legal and
accounting advice in the process of the formation of the new venture to
ensure appropriate tax treatment. We also discuss the role of governance
of the firm and the need for buy-sell agreements and intellectual prop-
erty protection as well.
In Chapter 7 we turn to entrepreneurial finance and the search for capi-
tal. While everyone thinks this is the most critical part of creating any
new venture, we argue that it is only after you understand what you are
doing other things first. Do you really understand your business con-
cept? What are your markets? How to reach these markets? Then and
only then can you discuss how much money you need and where to get
it. We put emphasis on the use of bootstrap financing and achieving
profitability as frankly this is what 98 percent of all entrepreneurs will
ultimately use to start their venture. We then discuss the importance of
cash-flow management as the very essence of entrepreneurial finance.
We acknowledge and discuss angel, venture capital, and hedge fund
financing but note the true rareness of these as tools. We acknowledge
that most entrepreneurs will have little or no access to significant outside
resources in starting their ventures.
Next we turn to the fundamental area of growing your new venture and
managing that growth in Chapter 8. We spend some time discussing the
myth of high growth firms and why profitability is the primary financial
goal for any new venture if success is a goal. We also discuss further
issues of having family members in the business. We examine the issues
of growing beyond one location and moving into international markets.
Once again we provide examples and mini-cases to show the issues that
are encountered in growing a business and managing it. We believe you
have to learn to manage growth or it will kill your venture.
xvi
Introduction
Finally, we turn to the fundamentals of planning in Chapter 9. We
explore the planning process for the venture and the execution of your
intentions regarding the business. We discuss when you need to have an
actually written plan. We discuss when you do planning in the process
of creating a new venture and what should be included in those plans
or parts of plans. We comment on who will most likely want to see your
business plan and why they want to see it. We then discuss why concept
pitches to investors are a form of plan and why impression management
in plans is important. In this final chapter we go through the planning
process in some detail along with examples and how to see plans as a
roadmap through the uncertainty of starting a new venture. We also
address some of the ongoing issues you will have in running an entre-
preneurial venture, be it for-profit or not-for-profit.
The Who
Before moving on the topic of entrepreneurship, we feel it may help you
understand our position on topics by knowing more about the two of
us. Collectively we have been involved in entrepreneurial activities for
nearly 60 years and family businesses for over a half century. We have
worked together as colleagues over 15 years, despite being separated by
thousands of miles, living on two different continents, and having two
different native tongues. Malin’s first language is Swedish, her second is
Finnish, and she is highly fluent in English. On the other hand, Alan’s
only language is a strange form of English, known to some as Texan.
Despite the translational issues (wink), we have managed to overcome
the barrier of being divided by the common language of English (a chal-
lenge Winston Churchill often mentioned). Both of us are only chil-
dren and are very familiar with each of us having our own way. This has
meant that if we were to be successful as research and writing colleagues,
we had learned to cooperate, a skill we find every entrepreneur needs to
learn if it is not already a part of their personality.
So that you have some further idea of who we are, you will find in the
following text some information about our individual professional cre-
dentials and careers. Hopefully this information will let you understand
how we blend in this book our experiences with entrepreneurial ven-
tures with a rigorous understanding of the research that underpins this
book. As we have said earlier, we want to thank our families for being
xvii
Introduction
supportive of our collaboration over the years. We have seen kids and
pets grow up in our families and we sometimes think of each other as
siblings as much as research colleagues. Yes that sometimes means we
sometimes fight and frequently disagree, but from those interactions
come clarity of thinking we have found useful.
Malin Brännback, D.Sc., is Chaired Professor of International Business
and Dean at Åbo Akademi University from where she also received her
doctoral degree in management science in 1996. She also holds a B.Sc. in
pharmacy granted in 1986, also from Åbo Akademi University. After she
completed her doctoral degree, she was appointed Associate Professor in
Information systems at University of Turku. In 2000 she was recruited to
Turku School of Economics and Business Administration as Professor
in Marketing and became the founding head of the Innomarket research
group. Innomarket’s focus was to support start-up biotechnology com-
panies in their commercialization processes. In 2003 she was appointed
Chaired Professor in International Business at Åbo Akademi University.
She has served as Vice-Rector of the university as well. Currently she
is Docent at the Turku School of Economics where she taught prior to
returning to Åbo and she is Docent at the Swedish School of Econom-
ics and Business Administration in Helsinki (Hanken). She has been
Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship at Stockholm Business School
(Stockholm University) since 2012. She has been on the boards of several
biotechnology and IT start-up firms. She has held a variety of teaching
and research positions in such fields as information systems, interna-
tional marketing, strategic management, and pharmacy.
She has 200 publications in areas such as entrepreneurship, biotech-
nology, marketing, and knowledge management. She has co-authored
seven books with Alan Carsrud, some of which are Entrepreneurship
(2007) Greenwood Publishing; Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind:
Opening the Black Box (2009) Springer Verlag; Understanding Family
Businesses: Undiscovered Approaches, Unique perspectives, and Neglected
Topics (2012) Springer Verlag; and Handbook of Research Methods and
Applications in Entrepreneurship and Small Businesses (2014) Edward
Elgar. In addition, she has published three case books with Alan Carsrud
on family business with Springer Verlag. She, Alan, and Niklas Kivi-
luoto recently published Understanding the Myth of High Growth Firms:
The Theory of the Greater Fool (2014) with Springer Verlag. She is on
xviii
Introduction
the review board of Journal of Small Business Management. Her current
research interests are in entrepreneurial intentionality, entrepreneurial
cognition, and entrepreneurial growth and performance in technology
entrepreneurship, as well as use of social media and the role of culture
and language in business.
Malin resides just outside Åbo (Turku), Finland, in the south-west Finn-
ish archipelago with her husband (Patrik), their three children (Anton,
Anna, and Axel), and their two dogs. She is an avid and accomplished
chef along with her husband. She enjoys any food with lemons and wine
(especially Italian). She loves to knit, can throw a mean clay pot on a
wheel, and enjoys working in her garden when it is not freezing (yes
there are hot summers in Finland). She adores sitting in the sun on San-
torini in the summer as well as enjoying a long weekend in Rome with
her husband.
Alan L. Carsrud, Ph.D., Ec.D., was reared in his family’s Texas and Ohio
ranching and farm business. His father was a clinical psychologist and
Alan followed initially in his footsteps. He holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in
Social Psychology from the University of New Hampshire, a B.A. in Psy-
chology and Sociology from Texas Christian University. He did postdoc-
toral work in Applied Industrial Psychology at The University of Texas
at Austin. He holds an honorary doctorate in micro-economics from
Åbo Akademi University in Finland. Today he is Managing Director of
Carsrud & Associates, a consulting firm for entrepreneurs and family-
owned and managed firms. His consulting clients have included govern-
ment agencies like NASA and the Republic of Palau, the Los Angeles
Unified School District, large firms like IBM and Ernst and Young, as
well as numerous family and entrepreneurial firms in the United States,
Finland, Australia, Turkey, India, Mexico, Japan, and Chile. He has been
involved in over 200 start-ups in industries such varied as retail, winer-
ies, accounting, food, airlines, biotechnology, the Internet, computer
technologies, and even university-based entrepreneurship programs.
His current academic position is Visiting Research Professor and Docent
at Åbo Akademi University in Turku (Åbo), Finland. His prior aca-
demic positions include holding the inaugural Loretta Rogers Chair in
Entrepreneurship at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson
University in Toronto, Canada; Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship,
Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Professor of Hospitality
xix
Introduction
Management, and Founding Executive Director of the Eugenio Pino and
Family Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International Uni-
versity. He has been Senior Lecturer and Academic Coordinator of the
Price Center at the Anderson School at UCLA and Senior Lecturer in
Electrical Engineering at the Samueli School at UCLA. He has also been
on the graduate faculties of the Australian Graduate School of Manage-
ment, Bond University (Australia), Durham University (UK), Anahuac
University (Mexico), Nanyang Technological University (Singapore),
University of Southern California, Pepperdine University, The Univer-
sity of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, and the State University
of New York at Brockport.
He is a Fellow of the Family Firm Institute (FFI) and has served on the
board of directors of FFI and the United States Association for Small
Business and Entrepreneurship. He is Associate Editor of the Journal
of Small Business Management, and co-founded Entrepreneurship and
Regional Development. He also is on the Review Boards of the Family
Business Review and the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and
Innovation. He founded the UCLA Venture Development and Global
Access Programs, which help create new, technology-based ventures in
Australia, Chile, Finland, France, Italy, Mexico, and the United States. In
addition, he created the Family and Closely Held Business Program at
UCLA. He has published over 230 articles and chapters on entrepreneur-
ship, family business, social psychology, mental retardation, and clinical
psychology. He has co-authored with Dr. Brännback seven books on
entrepreneurship and family business, and they have three additional
books under contract.
Alan resides outside Austin, Texas, in the Texas Hill Country with his
husband of 14 years, Danny, and their three cats (no he is not a cat lady
yet as that takes four cats) and a half dozen hummingbirds. He and
Danny are an avid collectors of Australian aboriginal art, Cuban sur-
realist paintings, Mexican cubist works, Chinese and Japanese antiques,
various antiquities, as well as African sculptures and masks. When not
working with Malin on various books and research articles, he is usu-
ally found on the patio tending his rose bushes with a glass of wine, or a
Chilean pisco sour, in hand.
This page intentionally left blank
11
1
What Is This Thing Called
Entrepreneurship?
1.0 Introduction
Pick up any newspaper or business publication anywhere in the world
today, such as the Financial Times, New York Times, Singapore’s Straits
Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, or the Economist, and you are likely
to find an article in which a politician or an economist is stating how
important entrepreneurship is to the nation and that we need more
entrepreneurs to ensure economic growth and prosperity. In these
same publications you will also find other stories about entrepreneurs
themselves. Most of us will ignore the economist’s or politician’s pon-
tifications and focus our attention on those compelling stories about
the valiant entrepreneurs and their uphill battles to create successful
ventures. We also sometimes enjoy the stories of the great failures as
well. These are also the stories that frequently are seen as documenta-
ries on TV and even award-winning movies (e.g., The Social Network
in 2010 about Facebook or Jobs in 2013 about the founder of Apple). As
the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Missouri recently has stated:
We have a myth in our heads of what the prototypical startup
founder is, and that myth is an early- to mid-20s white
male who studied computer science at an elite school and
dropped out.
1.1 The Entrepreneur
These myths and stories usually come in two forms. One story type is a
tale of somebody who had an idea that very few understood or believed
in, but who with determination and perhaps sheer luck was in the right
spot at the right time and voilà! What a wonderful success story, with
2
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
some drama thrown in for good measure! Quite often, it is a story on
a successful entrepreneur who has traveled from rags to riches through
hard work and an ability to make the right decisions at the right time.
But the college dropout has not always been the entrepreneurial myth.
We will explore some other models of the would-be entrepreneur. For
example, Hollywood has found great movie scripts in the entrepreneur-
ial tales of the lives of Henry Ford and Thomas Alva Edison. Yet Hol-
lywood has yet to tell the stories of some famous female entrepreneurs
like Madam C. J. Walker who turned her homemade recipes for hair
and scalp care products into a business empire that made her the United
States’ first self-made black female millionaire in the early 1900s.
The alternative story type is the story of a local or national entrepreneur
celebrating an anniversary for being in business half a century and now
handing over the firm to the next generation. You most likely will read
these two types of stories because they are spectacular and entertain-
ing. We may also be personally familiar with their products or services.
You may even know these entrepreneurs personally. These stories are
intriguing because they often capture some of “how dreams come true.”
Have any of these entrepreneurs served as personal role models? Ask
yourself whether reading any of these stories or seeing these movies
made you dream that you could be an entrepreneur? You do not have to
be a dropout of a top college to have these dreams. Nor do you have to
be under 60, or be independently wealthy to be an entrepreneur as we
demonstrate in this book.
1.2 Entrepreneurial Dreams and Their Outcomes
Even Sigmund Freud would admit that both dreams and words can have
various meanings. As with all words and dreams, they come with both
good and bad connotations. The word “dream” is most likely related to
the Germanic draugmus, (meaning deception, illusion, or phantom) or
the Norse draugr (ghost, apparition), or even the Sanskrit druh (seek to
harm or injure). Have you ever wondered whether your entrepreneurial
dream could become one of these stories? Elias Howe (1819–1867) was
reported to have said that the inspiration for his invention of the sewing
machine came from a dream about being attacked by cannibals bearing
spears that looked like the needle he then designed for his machine.
Similarly Nikola Tesla is said to have been able to imagine a device in his
3
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
mind’s eye and then build it without ever having to write anything down,
certainly an interesting form of “day dreaming.”
Biographies of entrepreneurs who became self-made billionaires are
frequently best sellers much for the same reason. They tell stories of
dreams coming true. One only needs to think of the recent biography
on Steve Jobs and the dramatic events at Apple or the movie about Mark
Zuckerberg and the drama behind the founding of Facebook. We also
see many of these stories focused on men, but one cannot ignore the
stories of famous women entrepreneurs like Coco Chanel (fashion), or
Madame C. J. Walker, Elizabeth Arden, Dame Anita Roddick, and Estée
Lauder (cosmetics), or Olive Ann Beech (aircraft), Oprah Winfrey and
Martha Stewart (media), or Ruth Handler (who gave us “Barbie” and
co-founded Mattel Toys).
How many of you are familiar with famous entrepreneurs from around
the world who you most likely don’t know that you know? Consider
Sweden’s Ingvar Kamprad (retail), or the Netherlands’ Gerard Adriaan
Heineken (brewing), or Chile’s Don Melchor de Santiago Concha y Toro
and his wife Emiliana Subercaseaux (wineries), or Japan’s Takeshi Mita-
rai (electronics). In all these men and women one sees a picture of the
entrepreneur as a person who is visionary, hardworking, risk taking,
ambitious, having exceptional leadership skill, one who never gives up,
and a great source of inspiration. We like to describe them as having an
entrepreneurial mindset (Brännback and Carsrud 2009). What all these
men and women have done is to show that these qualities, in combina-
tion with a brilliant idea and the ability to market, results in a great com-
pany that ultimately made the entrepreneur very wealthy. However, is
wealth the only definition of success? For many of these people, success
was changing an industry or creating something that was sustainable
and enduring as a business over generations.
To most of us, many of the companies cited are examples of successful
entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. They are enduring brands created
centuries ago that we still use. Successful entrepreneurship is not only
about what is created here and now. It is not only about computers and
Internet business (Apple, Dell, Amazon, or eBay). It is also about sus-
tainability over time. For a thorough discussion on lasting brands and
their entrepreneurs, one needs to read Koehn (2001).
4
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
1.3 There Is No One Narrative
The great engineer and scientist Nikola Tesla, who gave away many of his
patents and was often a “loner,” is also a great example of someone using
his own unique definition of success. While making money is one way
you know that selling that idea is creating value for customers, it is not
the only definition of success. There are many ways to spell SUCCESS.
This is what we consider successful entrepreneurship and how we often
describe a successful entrepreneur. Success is very much in the eye of the
beholder and depends on the goals the entrepreneur has set for them-
selves. We have more to say about both the entrepreneurial mindset and
success later in this book.
If you were to name a few successful entrepreneurs today, you are likely
to mention Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Martha Stewart, Mark Zuckerberg,
Oprah Winfrey, and perhaps Henry Ford because you know or even own
and use their products. Not all of you will know who Peter Thorwöste,
Josiah Wedgwood, Erling Persson, Billy Durant, or Anita Roddick are.
However, many of you know or own products from companies for whom
these were the founders: FISKARS scissors, Wedgwood china, H&M
clothing, General Motors, or the Body Shop cosmetics.
Consider Peter Thorwöste, who founded Fiskars Ironworks in 1649,
which today is known as FISKARS, the global company manufactur-
ing not just of the scissors with the orange handles (see Figure 1.1) but
also garden tools, ceramics, and boats. Fiskars is today a leading global
supplier of branded consumer products for the home, garden, and out-
doors. Brands like Fiskars, Iittala, Royal Copenhagen, Rörstrand, Arabia,
Buster, and Gerber all belong to the Fiskars brand palette.
Figure 1.1 Fiskars scissors.
5
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
Then there is Josiah Wedgwood, an English potter who founded the
Wedgwood pottery firm in 1759. This firm’s products are still sell-
ing, and the brand Wedgwood china (along with its Waterford Crystal
line) is known worldwide for its quality (see Figure 1.2). While writing
this book, we learned that Fiskars on May 11, 2015 agreed to acquire
the WWRD group. In addition to Wedgwood, other luxury brands in
WWRD include Waterford, Royal Doulton, Royal Albert, and Rogaška.
These brands are now part of this very same Finnish family firm. This
is a great reminder of how successful entrepreneurs can create ventures
and products that continue to impact business and the lives of consum-
ers several hundred years later.
So is Heinz, today most well-known for its ketchup. Few of us may know
that their breakthrough product was pickled horseradish. Their well-
known logo ‘57 Varieties’ created in 1896, and was the first electric sign
on Manhattan lit in 1900. Recently H. J. Heinz has been purchased from
the founding family by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and 3G
Capital. Then there is the Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company
that changed not only manufacturing processes but also the automo-
tive industry. The firm still remains largely in family control through a
complex ownership structure.
Figure 1.2 Wedgwood pottery.
6
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
1.4 Collective Dreams
We all dream and some of us even hallucinate. Dreams are a part of many
inventions. If we think of technology, then Thomas A. Edison often
comes to mind. He was an “inventor” and entrepreneur who brought
electric lights into homes and founded electric generation companies
that still bear his name, even General Electric (GE) was founded by
Edison. However, the story of electricity would not be complete without
acknowledging Nikola Tesla who many say was the first to develop alter-
nating current (among many other numerous breakthrough inventions)
while Edison’s team focused on direct current.
As with all breakthrough inventions, many people are involved. For exam-
ple, there were 22 others ahead of Edison in inventing the light bulb, but it
was Edison who knew the power of marketing and branding. That is, pio-
neers in an industry like Tesla are often not the ones who win the prize or
the wealth and acclaim, but those who came after them and understood how
to develop a business model to exploit that invention. Success is not always
about being first, or as some say, one gets “shot by other pioneers coming
up behind you.” Part of the task of any entrepreneur is to get those on their
teams to have similar dreams, if not buy into the one of the founder(s).
1.5 Why Entrepreneurship Became Important
Here we are going to get a bit academic, so forgive us. You should realize
that the terms entrepreneurship and entrepreneur have been around for
centuries. Some consider Cantillion in 1755 as having been the first to
mention the phenomena in a published work. Still others claim Say (1803)
was first. Regardless, Hoselitz (1951) finds early traces in historical dic-
tionaries to the Middle Ages in the normal course of development of the
French language. The most general and probably the earliest meaning is
“celui qui entreprend quelque chose,” which literarily means “he who gets
things done,” in other words an active person. The preceding discussion
shows that the term has stirred up considerable academic debate for quite
some time even though Schumpeter (1934) is often considered to be the
intellectual father of the modern field of entrepreneurship.
It is our considered opinion that entrepreneurship became important in
contemporary life in 1987 to be precise. In that year entrepreneurship
came to be regarded as a significant factor in national wealth creation,
7
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
not just personal wealth creation. It thus entered the awareness of the
wider, modern, audience. In 1987 David Birch published his book Job
Creation in America. This book was the result of a longitudinal study
carried out at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) between
1969 and 1986. The study traced 12 million individual business estab-
lishments during this period of time. The raw data was from Dun and
Bradstreet (D&B), single unit stand-alone companies; a store, a small
plant or a law firm. In 1986 the establishments employed 95% of all non-
governmental workers in the United States. The complete files of D&B
were tapped regularly during this time period. The files had information
on employment rolls, age, and location of each establishment.
Birch’s study showed that small start-up firms were responsible for more
than 80% of all new jobs created in the United States and that large cor-
porations in fact decreased employment. Small firms are more likely
to expand than large organizations. If large firms were to create new
jobs that would take place through a new business unit, not a new firm.
To be blunt: large firms create new jobs through the formation of new
business units. Mom and Pop Delis open up a second store managed by
the owner’s daughter. Statistics from the U.S. Small Business Adminis-
tration has over the years remained fairly stable and the same holds for
most Western countries; 99.5% of all firms in a country are classified as
small firms. This holds for the United States, Australia, Chile, India, or
Finland. In 2015 there is evidence from the United States that 310 new
entrepreneurs per every 100,000 adults were added each month. This
is up from a monthly average of 280 in 2014. This indicates entrepre-
neurial levels have returned to a more normal pattern since the great
recession of 2008. Of equal interest is that in 2013, 23 million people
were self-employed, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For whatever
reason, more and more individuals are choosing different paths to being
an entrepreneur.
1.6 Challenging Assumptions—Entrepreneurship
Is for All
That is, the results from the study by Birch challenged the long-held
assumption that large organizations were the engines and drivers of a
national economy in terms of job creation, innovation, and growth. A
follow-up study to Birch’s was presented by Bruce Kirchhoff and Bruce
8
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
Philips in the same year, but with different data. That study confirmed
the findings by Birch. Both studies included recessions. Kirchhoff and
Philips discovered that during recessions the job creation effect was
extremely high, in fact 100% during 1980–1982. While we know that it
is during recessions that large organizations lay off people, this evidence
seems to have come as news to the general public and to politicians in
particular.
These results caught the attention of politicians and legislators and as
pointed out by Brännback et al. (2014) that each president since Ronald
Reagan has endorsed growth and entrepreneurship in major addresses.
The European Union (EU) signed the Lisbon treaty in 2001, which spe-
cifically states that the EU will provide substantial support to entre-
preneurship as a way to create economic growth within EU. The word
entrepreneur has been so widely used in recent years in the United States
and in Europe that you often wonder who is not included. We discuss
who is an entrepreneur later in this chapter.
One of the myths that we want to challenge at the very front of this book
is that entrepreneurship is only for a few, or that it is a male career, or
that most entrepreneurs are wealthy to before they start a firm. Another
myth is that successful entrepreneurship only happens among those with
a technology background. While there is some evidence to support that
men outnumber women as entrepreneurs, that statistic is rapidly chang-
ing in the United States and worldwide.
Likewise, the number of entrepreneurs among the poor and disabled
has been increasing in recent years. One reason is reflected in the work
of Noble Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi
economist from Chittagong University. Professor Yunus created the
Nobel Peace Prize winning Grameen Bank (www.GrameenFounda-
tion.org) with the focus on women. He recognized that women were
the ones usually in charge of the family’s money and were far more
likely to repay loans than were men who typically would waste money
on drink and other women. What Yunus was building on was the fact
that women are less likely to waste money on highly risky ventures and
as evidenced by Grameen’s success. However, they were more likely
to create sustainable businesses and support their families. Another
group that has exploited the same concept is Women’s World Bank-
ing (www.womensworldbanking.org). Interesting immigrants in the
9
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
United States have a higher incidence of new venture creation than
nonimmigrants.
Technology entrepreneurship has been all the rage for decades and
increasingly more and more women are becoming involved in start-
ing technology firms. There are programs to foster technology firms
and these exist worldwide. These programs have fostered firms like
Google that came from work done at Stanford and fostered by the
Stanford Technology Ventures Program (www.stvp.stanford.edu). In
the United States there are programs for returning military veterans at
Syracuse University and UCLA, for social and “green” entrepreneurs at
Colorado State University, and for the disabled at the University of Illi-
nois at Chicago, to name just a few. The point we want to make here is
that entrepreneurship is for everyone regardless of gender, race, sexual
orientation, location, personal wealth, or physical health. In this chapter
we hope we will challenge you to think of people from all walks of life
who have chosen an entrepreneurial path for their lives and have made
a difference. Perhaps what these programs show is that there are a vari-
ety of environments in which entrepreneurship can exist and in which
entrepreneurs can thrive.
1.7 Entrepreneurial Environments
Birch’s study also showed that new firms, which take the place of older
ones, tend to relocate and use a different workforce, and other resources
such as needs of capital, transportation, governmental services, educa-
tion, recreation, and energy. In fact, Birch’s study offered a preview of
where next “business hot beds” were likely to emerge. One such was
Austin, Texas, which discuss later in this chapter regarding an interest-
ing mix of technology and artistic entrepreneurship. Birch showed that
small firms and entrepreneurs were important for economic develop-
ment of regions and subsequent studies confirmed this finding as well.
Some of the best known examples are Silicon Valley and Route 128 that
became models for similar examples worldwide. We are seeing entrepre-
neurial revival in rust belt cities like Detroit who have had to reinvent
themselves.
For a thorough discussion encounter of the importance of regional
developments in these areas, please read Saxenian’s (1994) book Regional
Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128.
10
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
Regional agglomerations of business activities and communities exist
everywhere and tend to be specialized to certain industries or eco-
systems. For example, today these even have their own annual trade
shows like SXSW (South by Southwest) attracting all major actors in the
industries of internet, interactive digital technology, music, and films.
Another is the Consumer Electronics Show held annually in Las Vegas
where cutting-edge technology usually launches. One need only think
of how the Detroit Auto Show still dominates the automobile industry
or how the Paris Air Show does in aircraft.
1.8 National Innovation Systems
for Entrepreneurs
The development of national innovation systems was also a result of
Birch’s findings. These are governmental initiatives on a macro level
aimed at institutions. It has always been claimed that national innova-
tion systems are for the benefit of individual entrepreneurs, but research
results are not conclusive here. In many cases national innovation sys-
tems remained abstract and distant to the everyday entrepreneurs. It is
important that we as individuals realize and recognize that entrepre-
neurship significantly impacts our lives, not just about job creation but
also as a source for developing effective and innovative solutions for
environmental and social problems. In many countries cultural institu-
tions such as libraries and concert halls, universities, and foundations
carry the names of successful entrepreneurs who have been significant
donors to these organizations.
It is also important to understand that entrepreneurship is not only
about small firms. In fact, large organizations can be extremely entrepre-
neurial. This is often called corporate entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur
may be missing, but usually the champion is then called an innovator.
In that context entrepreneurship and innovation—or entrepreneur and
innovator—have come to mean the same. Yet, following Kirzner (1973)
and different from Schumpeter’s (1934) ideas, entrepreneurship does not
always require what most people would think of as innovation.
Since the publication of the study by Birch, entrepreneurship and firm
growth have been firmly on the agenda, be it government policy, aca-
demic research, or public press. There are those who firmly believe that
11
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
entrepreneurship and growth are synonyms. They are not, as we show
in our book (Brännback et al. 2014), and which we discuss later in this
book. They are not synonyms and neither entrepreneurship nor growth
is always good or successful.
What we have shown in this discussion is that entrepreneurship is a
critical element for the economic improvement of an individual, a fam-
ily, a firm, a region, and a nation. To us this means that entrepreneur-
ship can exist in small firms as much as in large organization. It exists
in for-profit firms and in nonprofit social ventures. Growth and inno-
vation are often associated with entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial
firms, but not always. As we show in the following text, personal wealth
creation is not always what drives an entrepreneur. It can be a desire
to work independently, but also more altruistic ambitions like solving
social problems.
1.8.1 Incubators and Accelerators
At this point we want to make some comments on the role of new ven-
ture incubators and accelerators. Both of us have been involved with
these programs and have worked with firms in these programs in a num-
ber of countries. We have seen incubators aimed at wireless technology,
cell phone apps, biotechnology, agriculture, and even new food prod-
ucts. Hundreds, if not thousands, of these organizations exist all over
the planet. Every major research university either has one on campus
or there is one located nearby. Just look at Silicon Valley or Route 128
outside Boston to see evidence of such activities. Cities with a desire to
attract or retain technology talent have fostered these activities which
may be either for-profit or not-for-profit in form. One only need to look
at the American television shows like Shark Tank and its spin-offs in
Canada and elsewhere to see the desire to have both financial and pro-
fessional support that these institutions can provide.
However, the evidence to day is at best inconclusive if incubators really
help new ventures become successful. The same outcome may well be
true of accelerators. Certainly, many of these groups can claim successful
firms among their graduates, but many successful firms are generated
without any such supporting organization. It really is a matter of hard
work on the part of the entrepreneur. We are trying to say that it takes
more than just being in a program like a new venture incubator. Being
12
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
accepted is not a guarantee of success. Be aware there are scams even in
this industry.
1.9 Entrepreneurs: Made or Born
As human beings we like to nurture these stories because they tell us
that it is possible to become a financially successful entrepreneur and
because most of these are well-known. What we tend to forget, or even
realize, is that all of these companies started small and the path to that
success was anything but assured. With these stories, we try to discern
the fundamentals of who an entrepreneur is or in some cases collective
entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial teams. We assume if we can define
who an entrepreneur is, we will then be able to identify these people and
encourage them. We fail to realize those same skills are used to be suc-
cessful in any profession.
We also must remember that success for many is not defined by money,
but often filling another goal like Jonas Salk and his desire to eradicate
polio. His focus was developing a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as
possible. He had no desire in personal profit. When asked who owned
the patent to his vaccine, Salk said, “There is no patent. Could you patent
the Sun?” His goals were not monetary but included founding the Salk
Institute in La Jolla, California, which carries on his vaccine work even
today. Some consider Salk an early social entrepreneur long before the
term appeared in the media.
1.10 Who Is an Entrepreneur?
This leads us to start a discussion on who is an entrepreneur. Accord-
ing to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), there are those who
become entrepreneurs by necessity (no income, starving, etc.) and those
who are opportunistic (exploit a need, market, invention, etc.). Most of
the following discussion focuses on the latter group, the opportunistic
entrepreneur. It should be noted early on that the distinction is not a pure
one and includes a great deal of overlap. That said, there is increasing
evidence that at least in the United States there is a significant increase
in the number of new entrepreneurs who are starting their own busi-
nesses because they see an opportunity, not because they are out of work
and unable to get a job (necessity entrepreneurs). This may explain why
immigrants in the United States have higher new venture creation rates
13
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
than nonimmigrants, but most of these new firms are actually more
opportunistic. These opportunistic entrepreneurs now represent nearly
80 percent of total new entrepreneurs an increase from the numbers
found in the years following the Great Recession. Now let us turn to the
defining who is an entrepreneur in more detail.
In the late 1980s academics tried to define who an entrepreneur is and
what is entrepreneurial. William Gartner’s article “Who is an entrepre-
neur? Is the wrong question” was published in 1988. Our friend Bill ques-
tioned the idea of “an entrepreneur.” He argued that the why question
tends to be answered with a description of who. Later other researchers
tried to reframe the research agenda and define what an entrepreneur
does, why they do, how they do, and then who this doer is. It has been
argued that if we could find the answers to these questions, we should
be able to design targeted educational programs to create more entrepre-
neurs. Completing an exam in entrepreneurship, or majoring in entre-
preneurship at a university, would then be a rational solution to creating
entrepreneurs. But, most of us know that this is not exactly the way it
works. Certainly entrepreneurs have existed for millennia and certainly
long before anyone developed a course on how to be one at universities
such as Texas, Harvard, Stanford, New South Wales, Helsinki, or Oxford.
If one cannot make people into a functional entrepreneur, we rational-
ize that entrepreneurs are really born, that entrepreneurial behaviors are
genetic—often using family firms as examples. But, anyone in a family
business will attest that succession in family firms is among the most
difficult tasks to carry out. Not all children are interested, willing or even
able to take over the firm. Sometimes none of them are. And the ones
who may be interested are not the ones the present owner wants as suc-
cessor. Some children have no desire to live the life of a “constantly-on-
the-job” parent who is an entrepreneur. While the parent’s hardworking
may reflect the cost of being successful, not all children see that as desir-
able for themselves or as a factor in being a successful parent.
1.11 The Entrepreneurial Personality
Then there are those who will argue that becoming an entrepreneur
and a successful entrepreneur is all about personality. We do believe
having a personality compatible with entrepreneurial life is critical. But
that compatibility often is contextually bound, depending on the idea,
14
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
the market, and the culture in which one finds oneself operating. Fre-
quently, it is argued that entrepreneurs are risk takers and innovators,
but in many cases that is not the case. We acknowledge that there are
certain personality types and motivational styles often associated with
entrepreneurship in Europe, the United States, and some of the former
British Empire. We also know that Persian Jews turned to entrepreneur-
ial activity as that was the only one available to them in a conservative
Muslim environment.
These personality factors, however, may not be consistent in their impact
in other cultures such as Asia, Latin America, or Africa. There is some
indication that there are even gender differences across cultures. What
this says is that the issue of what is a unique entrepreneurial personality
is not a simple answer. What we have learned is that what personality
and motivational factors that make someone successful as an entrepre-
neur are the same as those that make one a successful pilot, scientist, or
academic (Carsrud and Brännback 2011).
We know from years of psychological research that the characteristics of
a successful entrepreneurs in the United States and most of Europe are
the same kind of characteristics found in any ambitious persons, whether
lawyer, doctor, airline pilot, that is, who are good at their professions. We
know that there are high levels of some of the different components of
achievement motivation for all of these. What we also know is that pattern
may be different in different cultures when it comes to entrepreneurs. One
component that seems to be consistent is the desire to work hard. Another
is the willingness to learn new and different things. The role of a competi-
tive personality seems to vary by cultural context as does the interaction
of these factors with each other. In other words, if you have what it takes to
be a good scientist, lawyer, academic, pilot, or other professional, you most
likely have what it takes motivationally to be an entrepreneur.
1.12 Entrepreneurial Mindset
We also argue that entrepreneurs and successful entrepreneurs have a
different mindset and attitudes (Brännback and Carsrud 2009). Research
has found differences in the cognitive styles of entrepreneurs and that
successful entrepreneurs have different entrepreneurial leadership styles.
Some of these skills can be taught, so entrepreneurial education is not
15
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
all bad. Because some characteristics are attitudes that can be influenced
through education, but some of this is closer to art. For an in-depth
discussion of various aspects of the entrepreneurial mind, we refer you
to our edited volume (Carsrud and Brännback 2009) in which there are
15 chapters dedicated to various topics about the entrepreneurial mind.
Based on research, we strongly believe that any person with a desire to
pursue an opportunity and to achieve a goal can be entrepreneurial and can
become an entrepreneur if all other factors are equal. While we have to be
cautious in defining success—as that is also a matter of kind and degree—it
is possible for any entrepreneur to be successful. In Chapter 2 we return to
the discussion of what success means. Moreover, for a person to be entre-
preneurial does not mean that the person has to start a for-profit company
as demonstrated in the preceding example of Dr. Jonas Salk.
To us entrepreneurship is an attitude toward life as much as it is an abil-
ity to create and then lead a firm. Having said that, we think it is vital to
understand how entrepreneurs think since we also argue that entrepre-
neurs appear to perceive their reality differently than those who are not
entrepreneurs. For example, why do some persons, and not others, decide
to become entrepreneurs? Why do some quit a job in a large firm with
a good salary and nice benefits and become life-style entrepreneurs by
starting a winery or an art gallery? How do some consider such an option
desirable and feasible while others do not? While theory maintains that
opportunities exist when there is a competitive imperfection, we argue that
very few entrepreneurs consider a potential opportunity in those terms.
We believe most potential entrepreneurs will think of a possible idea
from the personal perspective of whether it is something one wants to
do (desirable) and something one thinks one can do (feasible). This
notion is consistent with the theory of planned behavior, which posits
that a person who finds an opportunity desirable and feasible is likely to
create a venture. Absent intention, there is no action, and thus no new
venture. For a greater in-depth discussion of this theory, see Carsrud
and Brännback (2009) with several chapters that explain aspects of this
theory with respect to entrepreneurs.
To make our position clear, this book focuses on the individual think-
ing of creating, attempting to, or actually already starting a venture to
address an opportunity or need. Yet, we think it is important to offer
16
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
some justification to these desires and attempts in a wider perspective. In
fact, most societies want entrepreneurs and for these to create ventures.
Entrepreneurship is not just associated with Capitalist societies as we
find entrepreneurs in avowed Communist countries like Cuba, Vietnam,
and China. Most societies, other than North Korea, have realized entre-
preneurship is important for national wealth creation. We are sure there
are entrepreneurs in North Korea, but this is one place where you can be
shot for being one. That ugly reality aside, since the 1980s entrepreneur-
ship has been a mantra for many. It has also become a source of concern
when it seems to be in a slow decline as in the United States since 2008.
However, entrepreneurship has been around and studied for centuries
and we expect it to continue to do so for an unforeseeable future.
Finally, we want to be perfectly clear, entrepreneurship is for anyone will-
ing to take the time and expend the energy. Entrepreneurs are men and
women. They come in every color of skin and ethnic variety. They are
gay, straight, and transgender. They are both young and old. They are
geniuses and the not so bright. They may be Olympic athletes and they
may have disabilities. You do not have to live in Silicon Valley to become
an entrepreneur. We know of plenty of rural entrepreneurs and those in
urban centers. You do not have to be rich to be an entrepreneur. We in
this book try to give you examples of a wide variety of people who have
become entrepreneurs. You can be an entrepreneur regardless of what
is thrown at you. We are reminded of a story of a 57-year-old woman
whose husband divorced her. She lost everything, including the house,
car, and her money. As a parting jab, her ex-husband told her to get a
dog. She did, a large English Bull Dog. She started making cards with the
dog’s picture on them. They sold rapidly, she made more, branched out
into other products with the dogs picture. Today, she has the last laugh
on her ex-husband as her venture is now a multimillion dollar business.
The deciding factor is a mindset.
1.13 Defining Entrepreneurship: It All Depends
While we have used the terms entrepreneur and entrepreneurship previ-
ously, we have not yet defined what these terms mean. To do that, the
reader must allow us to digress for another moment into an academic
discussion that we feel ultimately will be informative. One reason we
think stories about various entrepreneurs have been so intriguing to so
17
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
many is that these stories reflect a complex set of interrelated phe-
nomena. Trying to frame entrepreneurship as a single scholarly domain
is nearly impossible. Yet, many have tried as long as entrepreneurship
has been recognized or existed as a field of research. Despite plenty of
attempts, to date there is no single definition of entrepreneurship. If you
have seven entrepreneurship professors in a room, you are likely to have
seventeen definitions. Those with psychology backgrounds have one (or
two), those coming out of sociology another, economists will have sev-
eral, and then there are those who come out of finance and management
who carry their own bias about the topic. Even accountants are engaged
in the field, which is good as too many academics in the field sometimes
confuse revenues with profits.
That said, there seems to be a very broad agreement that a commercial
entrepreneur (compared to a social entrepreneur) is usually a person
who exploits opportunities for the purpose of economic wealth creation.
This idea has existed for centuries starting with Cantillion in 1755. Dif-
ferent authors have over the years used different descriptions, implicitly
as a risk taker while exploiting opportunities (Cantillon 1755; Knight
1921; and Say 1803), or more explicitly as opportunity creator/innova-
tor (Schumpeter 1934) or as alert seeker of opportunities (Kirzner 1973;
Mises 1951). In 1776 Adam Smith actually saw the entrepreneur as a
capitalist (Landström 2005). Again, there is still little agreement in the
field on how to study how opportunities are formed or exploited.
1.14 Opportunity Recognition
However, there is a common understanding that an opportunity exists
when there are competitive imperfections on a market (Venkatarman
1997). While Schumpeter (1934) and Kirzer (1973) explicitly recognized
that opportunities are at the core of entrepreneurship, they had different
views on how opportunities and the entrepreneur were linked. Schum-
peter argued that market imperfections (opportunities) were created
when the entrepreneur introduced new innovations. Kirzner’s (1973)
entrepreneur is alert, discovers some imbalance in the market (imperfec-
tion), and seeks equilibrium through entrepreneurship. Kirzner’s entre-
preneur does not have to create anything new but will have to be able to
recognize and exploit what is already there. In other words, it is fine to
be a copycat.
18
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
Put differently, Schumpeter’s entrepreneur is on the edge of the pro-
duction curve and seeks to push the curve outward, thereby creating
personal and societal economic wealth. Kirzner’s entrepreneur is within
the curve and seeks to reach the edge of the production curve by way of
entrepreneurship (Landström 2005). We discuss opportunity recogni-
tion in greater detail later in this book. What is important here is how
stories in the media easily ignore these theoretical differences, but they
are there when we look at cutting-edge technology firms and those who
are in more traditional industrial sectors.
Academics love to argue in the tradition of which came first, the chicken
or the egg. This is played out in academic circles with the ongoing debate
of whether opportunities exist out there for everybody to discover and
then exploit or whether opportunities are created or formed by the entre-
preneur (Alvarez and Barney 2013). In the former case, the existence of
opportunities is taken as given and that how opportunities are formed
has no impact how an entrepreneur exploits them. The latter is a recent
realization that opportunities can be formed in very different ways and
that the formation process may actually impact the process by which the
opportunities are exploited.
The practical implications of these differences are, however, important.
One approach says that anyone can see an opportunity if they are vigi-
lant. The other sees the opportunity as being unique to the individual.
It is possible that both are correct but that the opportunities differ. We
hope we have not bored you with this academic discourse, but we feel
that often the popular press has tended to think that all entrepreneurs
are the same and yet the research indicates something far different.
An interesting encounter of attitudes toward life and the pursuit of
opportunities is offered by Birch (1987: 91):
America is a nation of immigrants, but this does not mean we
are a cross section of Europe and Africa—and, increasingly,
Latin America and the Orient. Rather, this country has always
attracted malcontents, who chafed at feudal restrictions in the
18th century and the lack of economic and religious freedom and
opportunity in their old countries in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Wariness regarding governmental restrictions on these freedoms
and opportunities could be seen in colonial unwillingness to fol-
low British imperial policy, which led to the Revolution.
19
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
Some have argued this melting pot view of the United States is why
Americans are so entrepreneurial vis à vis more homogeneous countries
like Japan. Clearly context and culture play a part in how entrepreneurial
goals are expressed. In this book we make every effort to show examples
of entrepreneurs from around the world we have worked with or are
familiar with.
1.15 Entrepreneurial Goals
Some scholars argue that the ultimate goal for entrepreneurship is to
create wealth, and if wealth is not created, it is something else than entre-
preneurship. This implicitly means that wealth creation is the same as
success. This position we have some fundamental difficulty with as
wealth may not be the primary or even secondary goal, but just an out-
growth of achieving another goal. Dr. Jonas Salk could have patented his
polio vaccine but choice instead to eradicate the disease. To imply you
have to be wealthy to be considered an entrepreneur simply is ludicrous.
But, there is another difficulty if you say wealth creation is the only goal
of entrepreneurs, because it means that entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs
only if they succeed (in wealth creation). That would mean that those
who fail are not entrepreneurs. They are something else. The stories of
failed entrepreneurs are rarely found in media stories, somehow indicat-
ing that failure is less frequent than success. Yet we all know this is not
the case. If the twin brothers Francis Edgar Stanley and Freelan Oscar
Stanley who founded The Stanley Motor Carriage Company had been
successful, we all would be driving steam-driven cars. Failures do occur,
some more spectacular than others.
However, even academic researchers have not really looked at failed
entrepreneurs. One reason to this is certainly that it is very hard to find
entrepreneurs who are willing to talk about their failure. That is simply
a very human thing. We rather like to talk about our successes than our
failures. It is possible that failure is driven by many of the same factors as
success. The reality is that we cannot really understand what drives suc-
cess without looking at failure. Here is where work done many years ago
is informative. There is evidence that entrepreneurs will have as many
as seven ventures in a lifetime and yet only one of those will be deemed
“a success.” The issue is when does that successful try come? Is it at the
front of this life-long process or does it happen on the seventh try? Take
20
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
as another example the bankruptcy statistics to understand the issue is
not trying. The real issue is whether society, family, and your attitudes
will allow you able to try again. One of our grandfathers once reminded
us that you have not really ridden a horse till you have been thrown off
and gotten back on again. In many ways entrepreneurship is really like
riding a horse, a big bucking one.
1.16 Different Goals for Different Folks
Then there is the fact that an entrepreneur may be in it for entirely different
reasons than creating wealth. Creating a venture may come from the bare
necessity of finding a way of getting food on the table or supporting a fam-
ily (a necessity entrepreneur), think of our Persian Jews mentioned earlier.
Becoming an entrepreneur may be driven by a desire to generate collective
wealth—social wealth—the idea of doing well for someone else. In fact, in
some cultures individual entrepreneurship is frowned upon as you may be
risking the very survival of your family or the community if you fail. Thus,
entrepreneurship becomes a community decision and activity.
There is also the reality that for personal reasons, such as increasing ones
quality of life (a very subjective definition), an individual may adopt a
life style form of entrepreneurship, which is different from those who
focus on earning lots of money. Perhaps it is the desire to be able to con-
tinue living in one’s rural home town, rather than having to move to the
big city? Perhaps it is a desire to turn a hobby into a living, for example,
a person hooked on surfing or downhill skiing deciding to create a store
specializing in surfboards, snow boards, and downhill skis? Perhaps it is
a desire to cure a disease, certainly a noble pursuit. The issue is whether
the goal set is what really defines success, but is more that is mentioned
later in this book. Through this book we give short examples and cases of
different types of entrepreneurs to demonstrate that entrepreneurs come
in all genders, races, ethnic groups, nationalities, and ages. To us what
makes an entrepreneur is attitude, part of an entrepreneurial mindset.
1.17 Other Definitional Issues
There is another way to take this definitional issue of entrepreneur-
ship, and that is to try to define what entrepreneurship is not. But, that
approach is not very helpful either. However, some of our colleagues are
21
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
on the verge of describing entrepreneurship as something really excep-
tional, that being entrepreneurship is the creation of high growth firms.
We address the issue of growth in a later chapter of this book . However,
for an in-depth discussion on why this is a fool’s errand, we refer you to
our book Understanding the Myth of High Growth Firms: The Theory of
the Greater Fool (Brännback et al. 2014).
In the same vein some view second-generation family business owners
as not being entrepreneurs, as they did not create the venture but just
inherited the firm. If that is the case Ray Kroc was not the entrepreneur
at McDonald’s nor were the two McDonald brothers Richard and Mau-
rice, but their father Patrick was. This definition would mean that only
founders can be entrepreneurs. Just like McDonald’s where those who
came later would be the acknowledged entrepreneurs, we have plenty
of examples of family firms remaining entrepreneurial generation after
generation as we can see in firms that reinvent themselves with new
products, markets, and organizational structures. Heineken Brewing is
another example of a family firm making entrepreneurship happening in
terms of new markets and brands under the leadership of Alfred “Fred-
die” Heineken, the grandson of the founder.
Returning to Necessity Entrepreneurs, such as immigrants or oppressed
minorities, these individual did not initially discover an opportunity but
had to find a way to make a living and therefore had to do something.
To say that this is not entrepreneurship is to negate the struggle many of
these people have undergone. Interestingly, many necessity-based firms
are actually exploiting opportunities and thus the distinction between
the types can be fuzzy at best.
There are a few who think that only those with frame-breaking technol-
ogy can be true entrepreneurs. We totally disagree. These technology
entrepreneurs, who are real special cases, face entirely different chal-
lenges than many “ordinary” entrepreneurs in established industries
or necessity entrepreneurs in trying to survive physically. They need
much more initial funding and it takes forever to turn a profit if they
ever manage to do so. Biotechnology entrepreneurs are a special case of
technology entrepreneurs as that is about developing science first, then
technology, and only then figure out whether there is a business oppor-
tunity involved there too. Perhaps, the one thing all of the above have
in common is hard work and a desire to achieve a goal, which differs
22
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
for each. If you think being an entrepreneur is easy, this is not the right
career choice for you.
1.18 The Self-Employed as Entrepreneurs
Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the number of domestically
based ventures that are ones with no employees expanded by 23 percent in
10 years to a total of more than 23 million firms. Nationally, these nonem-
ployer businesses have seen their revenue grow to more than $1.05 trillion.
It should be obvious at this point that we take a rather broad and inclusive
view of entrepreneurship. We think there are advantages in taking this “big
tent” approach to who are entrepreneurs. Take, for example, the creative
people or artists who sell their art or craft. In many cases there is little new
technology involved in those processes, just paint, clay, metal, and clutter.
However, as one will discover, the Internet and digital technology are rapidly
changing the visual arts as one can see in the use of Photoshop software, or
3D printing. The same can be said for musicians and performance artists
who have embraced new technologies in the creation of their art form.
The point is that many self-employed are in fact those who are creating
something, not just art, but new technologies like software applications
for cell phones. Typically, nonemployer businesses are one-person busi-
ness, like a freelance graphic designer. We all have people we know who
do this on the side as well as friends who blog and sometimes who make
an income from on-site advertising. Then there are the YouTube sensa-
tions with providing advice on a variety of topics and end up with a huge
following. We have seen the same thing happen with Twitter; users who
end up making money because of their posts. Sometimes these ventures
include family members and friends who aren’t paid. These are examples
we can all relate to are firms where the venture is entrepreneur’s primary
source of income. Just think of those real estate agents you know, or even
your personal medical doctor. In other cases the single entrepreneur
may operate their venture as a side job. If you are a parent, you know
these people as they provide babysitting and tutoring to your kids.
1.18.1 The Context for Self-Employed Entrepreneurs
Cities are often judged on the viability—not just on technology and
firms created—based on the quality of life, which include the arts. Where
would New Orleans be without music and the culinary entrepreneurs
23
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
that have made the city as famous for its food as it is for its music and
nightlife? Many of those who are self-employed are often considered by
the media and policy makers as not requiring attention. Their value has
often been ignored. What brought back New Orleans after Hurricane
Katrina was the vitality of the art, music, and food scenes. If they had
abandoned the city, it would have turned the city into a ghost town with
quaint buildings.
However, recently cities like New Orleans and Austin have seen the value
in fostering their artists as much as they have their technology firms or
oil firms. One only has to look at Austin, Texas billing itself as the “Live
Music Capital of the World” and the role music plays in SXSW (South
by Southwest) in which technology, music, and film go hand in hand.
In Austin alone, for example, one of the fastest growing areas for the
self-employed is in the Arts, entertainment and recreation sector. In 2003
there were 5,931 such ventures. By 2013 the number of such firms rose
to 11,355, an increase of 91 percent with estimated revenues of $271
million in 2013. This is no small part of the economic life of a city like
Austin.
One such nonemployee venture in the arts sector is one operated by
an Austin area artist, Danny Babineaux (www.dannybabineaux.com).
Currently his paintings are focused on animal subjects. He does com-
missions of people’s pets, the ubiquitous Texas longhorn cattle, as well
as endangered species such as elephants and rhinos (see Figures 1.3 and
1.4). He has sold his paintings not just in Austin but worldwide; thanks
to the Internet that allows him to be independent of traveling to art
shows and exhibiting in galleries with their associated overhead costs.
By using PayPal, he is able to take credit card payments. The following
is an example of some of his arts:
Historically one need only look at artists like Rembrandt Harmenszoon
van Rijn, the father of the “selfie,” Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, George
F. Handel, Richard Wagner, or the Beatles collectively, or Lennon and
McCartney individually to say that all were successful on a number of
dimensions including financially. All had huge impacts on society. War-
hol’s print runs became immediate production lines. Picasso outsourced
his pottery to a family firm to produce. Lennon and McCartney created
an entire industry with lasting impact on society and music. One can
look at the current success of Taylor Swift. It is clear her current music
24
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
Figure 1.4 Endangered elephants (Danny Babineaux, artist).
Figure 1.3 Texas longhorns (Danny Babineaux, artist).
25
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
and business skills only hint at what her entrepreneurial talents will pro-
duce in the future.
1.19 A False Dichotomy
If you remember earlier we discussed the work of David Birch and
discussed the role of small business and entrepreneurs. At this point
perhaps we need to delve into these terms in a bit more detail. Many of
the early scholars who argued that small business owners are not entre-
preneurs (e.g., Carland et al. 1984) had no real understanding of how
small firms operate. These researchers fail to appreciate the innovations
these firms often create nor how much an entrepreneur’s personality
impacts their operations (think Donald Trump here). Reading today
their definitions of 30 years ago of a small business owner and entre-
preneur is rather more confusing than helpful. Consider these (Carland
et al. 1984:358):
A small business owner is an individual who establishes and
manages a business for the principal purpose of furthering per-
sonal goals. The business must be the primary source of income
and will consume the majority of one’s time and resources. The
owner perceives the business as an extension of his or her per-
sonality, intricately bound with family needs and desires.
The entrepreneur is an individual who establishes and manages
a business for the principal purpose of profit and growth. The
entrepreneur is characterized principally by innovative behavior
and will employ strategic management practices in the business.
In this same article a small business venture is also distinguished from
an entrepreneurial venture (p. 358):
A small business venture is any business that is independently
owned and operated, not dominant in the field, and does not
engage in any new marketing or innovative practices.
An entrepreneurial venture is one that engages in at least one of
the Schumpeter’s four categories of behavior: that is, the prin-
cipal goals of an entrepreneurial venture are profitability and
growth and the business is characterized by innovative practices.
26
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
Finally, the Carland article presents a summary of a review of the litera-
ture between 1848 (Mill) and 1982 (Dunkelberg and Cooper) of char-
acteristics that describe entrepreneurs, but obviously not small business
owners. Birth order, gender, or marital status had been excluded (p. 355)
“. . . because of the inability of a prospective entrepreneur to alter those
variables in order to increase his/her probability of success.” These char-
acteristics portraying an entrepreneur included risk bearing, source
of formal authority, innovation, desire for responsibility, risk taking,
moderate risk taker, need for achievement, ambition, desire for indepen-
dence, drive, technical knowledge, communication ability, autonomy,
aggression, power, recognition, need for power, internal locus of con-
trol, personal value orientation, self-confidence, goal orientation, cre-
ativity, energetic, positive reaction to setbacks, independence oriented,
and craftsman oriented. Implicit was that entrepreneurs were male and
Anglo-Saxon in ethnicity.
The Carlands’ article is a nice example of how the perception and under-
standing of who is an entrepreneur, what are entrepreneurial charac-
teristics, and what is entrepreneurship have changed over the course of
three decades. Surely the small business owner seeks profitability and
growth too. Frankly, the description of small business owners sounds
very much like a description of many of today’s entrepreneurs as por-
trayed by the mass media, which makes an entrepreneur essentially a
small business owner as well. The preceding list of characteristics would
make almost everyone an entrepreneur. These characteristics can also be
found in small business owners or anyone else who is not an entrepre-
neur but who is successful in their professions or careers.
1.20 Do Goals Differentiate?
We strongly question the fundamental assumption that the principal
goals of an entrepreneurial venture are profitability and growth. We
believe these may result from doing something else well and these are
consequences of those goals being achieved. For some, wealth may be the
primary goal, but not always. If wealth is the only goal, one is reminded
of the response of the famous Jesse James of the Wild West of the United
States in the 1800s when asked why he robbed banks, his answer being
“that is where the money is.” We are not suggesting that bank robbery is
27
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
entrepreneurial, but one can certainly think of it being easier than start-
ing a company and waiting years for revenue or profits to arrive.
If profitability is the goal, this would leave quite a few firms considered
entrepreneurial outside the category of entrepreneurial. Most Kirznerian
entrepreneurs would be defined as small business owners. If we are to
take these definitions and apply them into today’s world, we will have
problems in defining Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter as entrepreneurial
(although many would certainly view him as one—and a successful one).
Consider this quote from an article in Newsweek, October 20, 2008:
. . . consider that Twitter, a “micro-blogging” site launched in
2006, earlier this year raised a reported $15 million in venture
funding at an undisclosed valuation—even though the com-
pany hasn’t made a dime so far and its managers aren’t trying to.
“We’re pre-revenue. We’re focused on growth.”
Yet, we know that when this founder sold off Twitter, he became a bil-
lionaire. The goal was not apparently firm profitability, but to drive up
valuation so that the owner could exit and create his own wealth, that is,
personal profitability. Perhaps this is a legal form of bank robbery.
It should be obvious at this point that it is no easy exercise to define
entrepreneurship or define an entrepreneur. It should also be clear that
we highly question the requirement of economic wealth creation as the
primary goal. For example, Johannisson (2005) has seen the entrepre-
neur as existentially motivated. That is, entrepreneurship is seen as a
way of life, involving total commitment by the individual. Perhaps that
would explain those entrepreneurs who start seven business ventures in
a lifetime. This to our minds points at other possible goals and desires
that are involved in entrepreneurship, as we pointed out in Carsrud and
Brännback (2011). In other words, goals serve as an important part of
entrepreneurial motivation.
1.20.1 A Mini-Case Example
For example of a motivated entrepreneur, let us look at one arts and
social entrepreneur in Florida we know well, Patrick Dupre Quigley.
Patrick was trained as a classical musician at Notre Dame Uni-
versity and later at Yale University. He has worked closely with
28
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
Michael Tilson Thomas the famous conductor. Interestingly,
he also had worked at various marketing and public relations
firms while in school and knew that there had to be a different
way to make classical music accessible. He had a clear goal: to
create a sustainable classical music group in the South Florida
market. Miami, despite having a new and magnificent concert
hall and state-of-the-art opera/ballet house, had seen many of
its classical music groups struggle and/or fail like the Florida
Philharmonic.
It became obvious to Patrick that the cost of such organizations
including those of full-time musicians could not be maintained
with the traditional model of concert revenues and donations.
He also realized that younger audiences were not going to sit
through classical concerts that were much over ninety minutes
in length. He also knew that there were many excellent free-
lance musicians, especially singers, who he could bring in, pay
them well for a given concert series and once the concert series
was over they would return to their homes or go to their next
gig. The result of his efforts has been one of the few profitable
non-profit arts organizations in Florida, Seraphic Fire and its
related orchestra (www.SeraphicFire.org).
We see this example as one where have a clear goal can motivate an
entrepreneur, in this case a social entrepreneur in the arts arena. The
point is that Patrick saw a need and had a goal to address that need. The
result has been pure joy for those of us who have attended his concerts,
or bought the CDs, or downloaded the music his groups have performed.
1.21 Opportunity and the Entrepreneur
What most of researchers would agree upon is that regardless of what
drives an individual, or regardless of what form entrepreneurship takes,
there is a fundamental requirement for an opportunity to exist even if
the entrepreneur is doing a business out of necessity. A person intending
to become an entrepreneur has to somehow perceive that an opportunity
exists. Whether that opportunity is viable as a basis for venture creation
is a different issue entirely. Usually, the person who sees an opportunity
thinks it is a good one. To reflect this reality, we have for years used
a definition of entrepreneurship, which was originally offered by two
29
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
Harvard Business School colleagues, Stevenson and Jarillo (1990) that
we find most appropriate. This definition also is useful for necessity
entrepreneurs (who are forced to find an opportunity). What is more
important is that it allows for both Kirzner’s and Schumpeter’s entrepre-
neurs to exist. This definition was originally:
Entrepreneurship is the process by which individuals—either on
their own or inside organizations—pursue opportunities with-
out regard to the resources currently control.
While this may not be a great operational definition for scientific
research purposes, it allows us to cast a board net over who are entre-
preneurs. It allows one to see how stories about entrepreneurs reflect this
definition in both new firms, existing family firms, and even in large,
multinational corporations.
1.22 Exercises
1.22.1 Look at the following list of names. Who are these individual?
What do you know about them? What companies did these start? When?
Which are family firms? Still run by the family? Who saw themselves as
social entrepreneurs? Which are now owned by large MNCs? Did they
have their IPOs? What are their brands?
Jeff Besoz
Chaja Rubinstein (aka Princess Gourielli)
Michael Dell
Cher Wang
Sergey Brin
Don Facundo Bacardi-Masso
Larry Page
Kiichiro Toyoda
Diane Halfin von Fürstenberg Diller
Alfred Sloan
Jacques Defforey and Marcel Fournier
J. K. Rowling
30
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
John W. Nordstrom
Arianna Huffington
Jaime Torres
Yang Lan
Erlin Persson
Elon Musk
Dave Thomas
Sara Blakely
1.22.2 Read the article: Carland, J. W., Hoy, F., Boulton, W. R., Carland,
J. C. 1984. Differentiating entrepreneurs from small business owners: A
conceptualization. Academy of Management Review, 9(2): 354–359. How
have the views changed over 30 years? Are these conceptualizations still
valid in today’s business context? Justify your response with real business
examples.
1.23 Advanced Exercises
1.23.1 Read the following books and articles. Based on your reading,
discuss in class the discovery and creation of opportunity. What are the
differences? Think of entrepreneurs whom you know personally. How
did they discover or create their opportunity? Did they prepare a busi-
ness plan or did they have a plan “in mind,” which was not written for-
mally. Did they have to revise the plan, how many times, and what were
the reasons for revision. Did they consider the possibility of failure?
Was there something in the process of creating the firm that they had
overlooked? What was the biggest surprise? These articles are not in
alphabetical order but in the intended reading order.
1. Shane, S., and S. Venkataraman. 2000. The promise of entrepreneurship
as a field of research. Academy of Management Review 25:217–226.
2. Shane, S. 2000. Prior knowledge and the discovery of entrepreneurial
opportunities. Organization Science 11(4): 448–470.
3. Sarasvathy, S. D. 2001. Causation and effectuation: Toward a theoreti-
cal shift from economic inevitability to entrepreneurial contingency.
Academy of Management Review 26(2): 243–263.
31
Chapter 1 What Is This Thing Called Entrepreneurship?
4. Eckhardt, J. T., and S. A. Shane. 2003. Opportunities and entrepreneur-
ship. Journal of Management 29(3): 333–349.
5. Alvarez, S. A., and J. B. Barney. 2007. Discovery and creation: Alter-
native theories of entrepreneurial action. Strategic Entrepreneurship
Journal 1:11–26.
6. Shane, S. 2012. Reflections on the 2010 decade award: Delivering on
the promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research. Academy of
Management Review 37:10–20.
7. Venkataraman, S., S. D. Sarasvathy, N. Dew, and W. R. Forster. 2012.
Reflections on the 2010 decade award: Whither the promise? Moving
forward with entrepreneurship as a science of the artificial. Academy
of Management Review 37:21–33.
8. Alvarez, S. A., and J. B. Barney. 2013. Forming and exploiting oppor-
tunities: The implications of discovery and creation processes for
entrepreneurial and organizational research. Organization Science
24:301–317.
9. Alvarez, S. A., and J. B. Barney. 2013. Epistemology, opportunities,
and entrepreneurship: Comments on Venkataraman et al. (2012) and
Shane (2012). Academy of Management Review 38:154–157.
References
Alvarez, S. A., and J. B. Barney. 2013. Forming and exploiting opportunities:
The implications of discovery and creation processes for entrepreneurial and
organizational research. Organization Science, 24:301–317.
Birch, D. 1987. Job creation in America: How our smallest companies put the most
people to work. New York: Free Press.
Brännback, M., and A. Carsrud. 2009. Cognitive maps in entrepreneurship:
Researching sense making and action. In A. Carsrud and M. Brännback (eds.),
Understanding the Entrepreneurial Mind: Opening the black box. Springer: Hei-
delberg, 75–96.
Brännback, M., A. L. Carsrud, and N. Kiviluoto. 2014. Understanding the myth
of high growth firms: The theory of the greater fool. New York: Springer.
Cantillon, R. 1755/1931. Essai sur la nature du commerce en général. London:
MacMillan.
Carland, J. W., F. Hoy, W. R. Boulton, and J. A. C. Carland. 1984. Differentiating
entrepreneurs from small business owners: A conceptualization. Academy of
Management Review, 9(2): 351–359.
32
Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur
Carsrud, A., and M. Brännback, eds. 2009. Understanding the entrepreneurial
mind: Opening the black box. Heidelberg: Springer.
Carsrud, A., and M. Brännback. 2011. Reflections on twenty years of research
on entrepreneurial motivation: Have we learned anything at all? Journal of Small
Business Management, 49(1): 9–26.
Dunkelberg, W. C., and A. C. Cooper. 1982. Entrepreneurial typologies. In K.
Vesper (ed.) Frontiers of entrepreneurship research. Wellesley, MA: Babson Col-
lege, 1–15.
Gartner, W. B. 1988. “Who is an entrepreneur?” is the wrong question. Ameri-
can Journal of Small Business, 12(4): 11–32.
Hoselitz B. F. 1951. The early history of entrepreneurial theory. Explorations in
Entrepreneurial History III, 3(4): 193–220.
Johannisson, B. 2005. Entreprenörskapets väsen (The essence of entrepreneur-
ship). Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur.
Kirzner, I. M. 1973. Competition and entrepreneurship. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Knight, F. H. 1921. Risk, uncertainty, and profit. Boston: Hougthon Mifflin.
Koehn, N. F. 2001. Brand new: How entrepreneurs earned consumers’ trust from
Wedgwood to Dell.
Landström, H. 2005. Pioneers in entrepreneurship and small business research.
Springer, Berlin: Springer.
Mill, J. S. 1848. Principles of political economy with some of their applications
to social philosophy. In J. A. Schumpeter (ed.), History of economic analysis.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1954.
Mises, L. von. 1951. Planning for freedom. South Holland, IL: Libertarian Press.
Saxenian, A. 1994. Regional advantage. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Say, J-B. 1803/2001. A treatise on political economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Trans-
action Publishers.
Schumpeter, J. 1934. The theory of economic development. Boston: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.
Stevenson, H. H., and J. C. Jarillo. 1990. A paradigm of entrepreneurship: Entre-
preneurial management. Strategic Management Journal, 11(5): 17–27.
Venkataraman, S. 1997. The distinctive domain of entrepreneurship research.
In J. Katz, (ed.), Advances in entrepreneurship, firm emergence, and growth, vol.
3. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 119–138.
This page intentionally left blank
247
A
Abbey, Edward, 201
accelerators, 11–12
advanced development stage,
product development model,
118–120
prototyping, 118
advertising, 106–107, 131
TV, 131
“word of mouth,” 106
“word of web,” 106–107
alliances, 119
Amazon, 122
Amgen, 121
angel investors, 193
Angelou, Maya, 85
Angry Birds, 59–60
Apple, 1, 3, 59, 64, 108, 109,
114–115, 121, 123, 141, 147,
175, 215, 217
Arabia, 4
Archimedes, 44
Arden, Elizabeth, 3
asset-based lenders, 192
attention, 63
attitudes, 65
entrepreneurs, 14–16, 20
247
Index
Austin, 23
available market, 87, 89.
See also marketing
awareness, success and, 43
B
Babineaux, Danny, 23, 101
paintings of, 24
baby products, 132–133
backward integration, 203
bankability, investors and, 186–194
angel investors, 193
banks, 192
capital, 189–191
debt financing, 191
venture capital, 192–193
venture’s money search,
193–194
Ban Ki-moon, 211
Bank of America, 67
Bank of Italy, 67
banks, 192
“barbie,” 3
B2B (Business to Business)
approach, 94–95
B2C (Business to Consumer)
approach, 94–95
248
Index
Beatles, 23
bed and breakfast (B&B), as
case example, 51–54, 57, 66
Beech, Olive Ann, 3
Bergdorf Goodman, 133
Berger and Berger, 156–157
Berkshire Hathaway, 5
Besmertnik, Seth, 42
“big money” approach, 169
Bionic, 42
biotechnology entrepreneurs, 21
biotechnology firms, innovation
at, 126–127
Birch, David, 7
on attitudes toward life and
opportunities, 18–19
entrepreneurship and firm
growth, 7, 9–11, 207, 209
follow-up study, 7–8
national innovation systems
and, 10
on small firms, 7, 9–11, 25
Black Friday sales, 128
blogs, 101–102, 106–107
BMW, 108, 154
Body Shop cosmetics, 4
Boon, Inc., 133
bootstrap financing, 194–196
advantages, 195–196
bootstrapping, 175
brainstorming, 66, 74
branding, 107–109
defined, 108
brands, 3, 108
break-even analysis, 178–179,
242
break-even point, 178
Buffett, Warren, 5
Bushnell, Nolan, 179
Business concept model, 58.
See also viable business
concept
creativity and, 65–66, 71–72
revenue component, 76
business growth, 201–206.
See also growth
mini-case example, by
replication, 204–206
strategy, 202–203
success and, 203–204
business model, 134, 172–173
innovation, 122–123
business plan, 225. See also
plan(s)/planning
about competition, 237–238
detail content, 232–242
executive summary, 233–235
financial plan, 240–242
general comments, 242
management and organiza-
tional plan, 238–240
marketing plan, 235–237
writing, 226–227, 232
Business to Business (B2B)
approach, 94–95
Business to Consumer (B2C)
approach, 94–95
buster, 4
buyer utility, 134
buy-sell agreement, 148
C
capital, 169, 189–191
sources, 190
249
Index
capitalist, entrepreneur as, 17.
See also entrepreneur(s)
capitalist societies, entrepre-
neurship association with, 16
cash flow, 215
break-even analysis, 178–179
conservative, 174
management, 175
needs, 175–177
negative, 126
numerical scorecard, 174–175
positive, 126
sensitivity analysis, 178–179
timing and, 177–179
Casper Mattress, 78–79, 100,
122, 173
cell phone, 131
cell phone apps, marketing
strategies, 100–101
census data, 117
Chanel, Coco, 3
change, industrial
as opportunity for innovation,
130–132
Chinese Glove problem, 88
Chocolate pralines (case study),
243–245
Christie, Agatha, 43
closed innovation, 114
Coca-Cola, 85, 109, 138
collective dreams, 6
commercialization, innovation
and, 125
community decision, for entre-
preneurship, 20
compact disk (CD), 127
compensation system, 156–158
competition
business plan about, 237–238
growth and, 216–218
competitive advantages
product/service innovation, 121
Comstock, Beth, 101–102
concept, ideas and, 65–68
development, 78–79
exercise to describe (case
example), 82–83
feasibility worksheet exercise,
80–82
for profitability and growth,
75–78
viable business concept,
65–66, 71–72, 76–77
conceptual event, 66–67
case example of, 67–68
Concha y Toro, Don Melchor de
Santiago, 3
conductor, 42
conscious capitalism, 42
conservative cash flows, 174
constant contact, 100
consumer electronics show, 10
consumers, 132. See also
customers
contract research organizations
(CRO), 121
copycats, 124
copyrights, 138
corporate entrepreneurship, 10
corporate veil, 163–164
Costco, 143
Costner, Kevin, 86, 125
counter trends, as concept
sources, 72–74
250
Index
Dell, Michael, 4
demand
market, 87, 89–90
opportunity and, 60–61
for products/services, 85
sources of, 60–61, 66
desires, 59, 60. See also fears;
needs
idea generation and
examples, 61–62
identification, 59–61
detailed assessment, product
development, 116–118
Detroit Auto Show, 10
development, 126. See also
product/service innovation
digital trends
Dimon, Jamie, 204
direct financial rewards,
157
discounted expected value,
firm’s, 215
Disney, Walt, 41
door-to-door salesman,
102
Dorsey, Jack, 27
dot.com era, 100, 130
dreams
collective, 6
entrepreneurial, 68–70
outcomes of, 2–3
Freud on, 2
as part of inventions, 6
Drucker, Peter, 58, 76, 212,
225, 229
Dun and Bradstreet (D&B), 7
Durant, Billy, 4
Covey, Stephen, 149
creativity, 63
aspect of, 65
defined, 64
passion and, 64, 74
role in idea generation, 63–65
Steve Jobs quote, 64
and viable business concept,
65–66, 71–72
credit cards, 102–103, 241
credit-carrying capacity, of firm,
192
CRO (contract research
organizations), 121
crowd funding, 196–198
equity-based, 197
reward-based, 197
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 65
Cuban surrealist art, 129
culture, failure and, 39
curiosity, 63
customers, 58. See also
marketing
information about, market
research and, 94–95
overshot, 132
role of, 85–86
D
da Vinci, Leonardo, 43, 74
“day dreaming,” 3
death of a salesman, 102
debt financing, 191
decision-making, new
employees hiring, 151–153
definitional issues, of
entrepreneurship, 20–22
251
Index
endangered elephants
(Babineaux’s painting), 24
entertainment, 60
entrepreneurial management,
165–166
entrepreneurial mindset, 3
entrepreneurial team, 142–144
entrepreneurial team structure,
158–162
informal structure, 161–162
line form, 159–160
project approach, 161
entrepreneurial venture, 25
entrepreneur(s), 1–2.
See also specific entries
biographies, 3
as capitalist, 17
characteristics, 14, 26
copycats, 124
defined(ing), 13, 16–17, 25
as dreamer, 68–70
failed, 19
identifying, 12–13
incubators and accelerators,
11–12
made or born, 12
marketing approaches, 94
mindset and attitudes, 14–16
myths and stories, 1–2, 8
national innovation systems
for, 10–12
necessity, 12–13, 20, 21, 29
opportunistic, 12–13
opportunity and, 28–29
as opportunity creator/
innovator, 17
overconfidence, 243
personality factors, 13–14
E
eBay, 122, 128, 129
e-businesses, 195
e-commerce, 128–130
economic development, of
regions (Birch’s study),
9–10
economic wealth creation, 46.
See also wealth creation
Economist, 1
economy, 51
economy, informal, 163
Edison, Thomas Alva, 2, 6, 41,
70, 216
education, marketing approach
and, 104
Einstein, Albert, 43, 66, 70, 123
Eisenhower, Dwight D., 223
electric car, 127
electricity, invention of, 6
Eliot, T.S., 123
e-mail, 100, 105, 153
employees, hiring new, 146–151
big errors, 147–148
buy-sell agreement, 148
case example, 150–151
characteristics of good,
148–150
decision-making about,
151–153
firing and, 152–153
rejection and, 152
employees/employment
growth in number of, 209–211
self-motivated, 149–150
employee stock ownership plans
(ESOPs), 191
252
Index
narrative, 4–5
national innovation systems,
10–12
for national wealth creation, 16
opportunity recognition, 17–19
overview, 1
for personal reasons, 20
success and
perceptions, 40–42
researchers perspective, 42–43
successful, 3, 4
technology, 9
entrepreneurship researchers
success defined by, 42–43
environmental risks, stage-gate
model of product development
and, 118
environments, entrepreneurship,
9–10
equity-based funding, 197
Ericsson, 218
error(s), hiring, 147–148
ethical risks, stage-gate model
of product development and,
118
ethnographic observation, 96
Etsy, 128
“eureka,” 44
European Union (EU), 8
executive summary content,
business plan, 233–235
existing consumers, 132
F
Facebook, 1, 3, 47, 73, 76, 98,
99–100, 102, 104, 153
advertising and, 106–107
entrepreneur(s) (Continued)
planning, 230–231
self-employed, 22–25
self-made billionaires, 3
success defined by, 41–42
successful, 3, 4
vs. inventors, 113–114
women, 3
entrepreneurship, 1–29
Birch’s study, 7
Capitalist societies and, 16
challenging assumptions, 7–9
collective dreams, 6
as community decision and
activity, 20
corporate, 10
defined(ing), 16–17, 29, 46
definitional issues, 20–22
different goals for different
folks, 20
dreams, 68–70
outcomes of, 2–3
entrepreneur(s).
(See Entrepreneur(s)
environments, 9–10
for everyone, 8–9, 16
false dichotomy, 25–26
and firm growth, 10–11
goals, 19–20
for different folks, 20
differentiation, 26–28
wealth creation, 19
importance of, 6–7
incubators and accelerators,
11–12
innovation and, 123–124
meaning, 6
myths about, 8
253
Index
capital, 189–191
debt financing, 191
venture capital, 192–193
venture’s money search,
193–194
IPO, 171–172
money
finding, 182–186
myths, 185–186
sources, 183–185
types/forms, 179–182
overview, 169–170
strategy development, 170–182
sustainable revenue model,
172–174
timing and cash flow, 177–179
venture capital, 171–172
financial plan, 240–242
financial rewards
direct, 157
indirect, 157
Financial Times, 1
FINELL, 133
Finell, Rebecca, 132–133
Finland, case example from
growth, length of time and,
213–214
successful venture from,
33–36, 34f
firing, employee, 152–153
firm founders.
See also entrepreneur(s);
entrepreneurship
success defined by, 41–42
firm(s), 7. See also specific entries
Birch’s study, 7
growth, entrepreneurship and,
10–11
failure, 19. See also success
culture and, 39
defined(ing), 37–39
entrepreneurial context, 40–41
as information, 38–39
as learning experience, 38, 39
measurement issues, 39–40
process, 38
vs. success, 40
family council, 163
family firm/business, 154–156
conceptualization, 154
goals, impact on hiring, 155
hiring of family members,
long-term impact, 156
overview, 154–155
fears. See also desires; Needs
idea generation and
examples, 61–62
identification, 59–61
insurance business and, 60
feasibility analysis, 80–82
worksheet exercise, 80–82
FedEx, 173
field of dreams, 86
‘57 Varieties’, 5
50 Shades of Grey, 60
finance, entrepreneurial, 169–198
bootstrap financing, 194–196
advantages, 195–196
cash flow, 174–175
cash-flow needs, 175–177
crowd funding, 196–198
investors, finding, 182–186
investors and bankability,
186–194
angel investors, 193
banks, 192
254
Index
Genentech, 121
General Electric (GE), 6, 66
General Motors, 4
Gerber, 4
Giannini, Amadeo Pietro, 67–68
Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor (GEM), 12
Global Entrepreneurship
Monitor Consortium, 208
goal(s)
entrepreneurial, 19–20
for different folks, 20
differentiation, 26–28
growth, 25, 26, 27
profitability, 26, 27
success and, 45–46
wealth creation, 19
long-term, 45
near-term objectives, 45
Godin, Seth, 87
“Golden Rule,” 152
Goldin, Kara, 42
Google, 9, 72, 92, 95, 104, 117
Grameen Bank, 8, 68
Great Depression, 68
Great Recession, 13, 92, 151, 187
Gross, Bill, 41
growth, 21. See also product/
service innovation; success
Birch’s study, 7, 9, 10–11, 207,
209
business, 201–206
mini-case example, by
replication, 204–206
strategy, 202–203
success and, 203–204
competition and, 216–218
firm value, growth in, 214–216
first to market acceptance, 75
first-to-the-market, 75
Fischer, Francis, 219
Fiskars, 4, 5
FISKARS scissors, 4
fixed costs (FC), 178
flexibility, 65
focus innovation, 121–123
Ford, Henry, 2, 4, 5, 66, 103,
119, 121, 127
Ford Motor Company, 5, 108,
109, 114
forward integration, 203
4 Ps, of marketing, 90
Franchises, 79–80
risk-related to, 80
franchisor, 79
Franklin, Benjamin, 170, 208, 223
freelance graphic designer, 22
Freud, Sigmund, 2
Frog Pod, 132
Fromm, Erich, 63
Fundamentals in Successful
Entrepreneurship, 33
funding. See also money
crowd, 196–198
equity-based, 197
reward-based, 197
G
Gandhi, Mahatma, 86
Garson, Greer, 169
Gartner, William, 13
Geisel, Theodor Seuss
(Dr. Seuss), 41
255
Index
Hewlett, William, 68
Hewlett-Packard, 68, 186
high growth firms, 21
hint water, 42
hiring, new employees, 146–151
big errors, 147–148
buy-sell agreement, 148
case example, 150–151
characteristics of good, 148–150
decision-making about,
151–153
family business goals and, 155
of family members, long-term
impact, 156
firing and, 152–153
rejection and, 152
H&M clothing, 4
hockey stick, 178
Hofmann, Hans, 116
“holacracy,” 150
hollywood, 2
entrepreneurial tales, 2
Hoselitz, B. F., 6
Howe, Elias, 2
Hsieh, Tony, 201
human resource (HR)
consultants, 148
I
IBM, 38, 153, 217
idea generation, 58–59, 70–74
attention and, 63
brainstorming, 74
counter trends and, 72–74
creativity, role of, 63–65
curiosity and, 63
inquisitiveness and, 70
concept design for, 75–78
viable business concept, 76–77
describing vs. defining,
206–216
economic perspective, 206–207
as entrepreneurial goal, 25,
26, 27
in firm value, 214–216
high, 208
intensive plans of, 202
as metamorphosis, 218–221
in new venture, 207
in number of employees,
209–211
performance and, 207
problem related to, 207–208
profit, 212
rapid, 208
in revenues, 212
sales, 212
in terms of length of time,
213–216
unprofitable high growth
strategy, 215
of venture, 201
G4 Spatial Technologies, 220
H
H. J. Heinz, 5
Handel, George F., 23
Handler, Ruth, 3
hard disk drive industry,
changes in, 131–132
Harvard Business Review, 208
Heineken, Alfred “Freddie,” 21
Heineken, Gerard Adriaan, 3
Heineken Brewing, 21
256
Index
incubators, 11–12
indirect financial rewards, 157
industrial changes. See also
innovation
as opportunity for innovation,
130–132
informal economy, 163
informal structure, entrepre-
neurial team, 161–162
information, failure and, 38–39
information-gathering session,
39
initial public offering (IPO),
171–172, 189, 214
innovation, 10. See also product/
service innovation
biotechnology firms, 126–127
business model, 122–123
closed, 114
commercialization and, 125
degrees of newness, 125–127
as dimension of entrepreneur-
ship, 123–124
focus, 121–123
impact, 123
industrial change as
opportunity for, 130–132
new models, 130–132
in marketing and distribution
(e-commerce), 128–130
need for, 123–127
open, 114
process, 122
radical, 123
reinventing industrial
products, 127–128
tourism industry, 129–130
types of, 120–123
idea generation (Continued)
intuition and, 70, 73
needs, wants, and fears
examples of, 61–62
identification of, 59–61
for new products/services,
62–63
“think out of the box,” 62–63
trends and, 72–74
understanding and, 73
viable business concept and
business model creation,
65–66, 71–72
Idealab, 41
idea(s), 57–83. See also
opportunity(ies)
business concept model,
58
concept, 65–68
development, 78–79
exercise to describe
(case example), 82–83
feasibility worksheet
exercise, 80–82
for profitability and growth,
75–78
viable business concept,
65–66, 71–72, 76–77
conceptual event, 65–66,
66–67
case example of, 67–68
franchises, 79–80
generation, See Idea
generation
timing and, 74–75
Iittala, 4
impact, innovation, 123
iMusic, 123
257
Index
IPO (initial public offering),
171–172, 189
iPod, 108, 121, 123, 218
iPod Touch, 218
Italy (case example of successful
venture), 51–54
iTunes, 122, 123
iWatch, 59
J
James, Jesse, 26
James Beard Award, 120
Jarmusch, Jim, 124
Jarvis, Christopher, 194
job Creation in America, 7
jobs
Birch’s study, 7
new business unit and, 7
during recessions, 8
jobs, 1
Jobs, Steve, 3, 4, 114, 141, 147
on creativity, 64
Johansson, Eva (success story
of), 33–36
Joss & Main, 100
JP Morgan Chase, 204
K
Kaiser, Henry, 68
Kamprad, Ingvar, 3
Kane, Bryan, 204–205
Karlsson, Petter (success story
of), 33–36
Kauffman Foundation of Kansas
City, 1
innovator, 10. See also
entrepreneur(s)
entrepreneurs as, 17
inquisitiveness, 70
Instagram, 98, 104
insurance sector, marketing
strategies, 98
integration
backward, 203
forward, 203
intensive growth plans, 202
internet, 92
marketing strategies and, 98,
99–100
cell phone apps, 100–101
market research and, 92
internet generation, selling to,
104–105
intuition, and idea generation,
70, 73
inventors vs. entrepreneurs,
113–114
invested money, 181
investors. See also money
angel, 193
bankability and, 186–194
angel investors, 193
banks, 192
capital, 189–191
debt financing, 191
venture capital, 192–193
venture’s money search,
193–194
finding, 182–186
iPad, 108, 121
iPhone, 59, 108, 120, 121
iPhone with Siri, 104
258
Index
Linux operating system, 119
Lisbon treaty, 8
Long Playing records
(vinyl records), 127
long-term goals, 45
LP-record, 127
Lucas, George, 64
M
M&A (merger and acquisition),
172
Macy’s, 88
Mailchimp, 42
management and organizational
plan, 238–240
manager(s), 153, 160
market, 87
available, 89
defined, 88
demand, 89–90
information about, need for,
86–87
potential, 88–89
target, 89
understanding, 86–87
marketing, 85–109.
See also customers
advertising, 106–107
available market, 89
branding, 108–109
defined, 87
education and, 104
market demand,
89–90
overview, 85–86
potential market, 88–89
price setting, 90–91
Kickstarter, 197
Kidder, David, 42
Kirchhoff, Bruce, 7–8
Kirzner, I. M., 10, 17, 18, 27, 29
KIVA, 198
Kroc, Ray, 21
Kurzius, Dan, 42
L
labor laws, 144, 145
labor unions, 144
Lambie, R. C., 219
Land, Edwin, 65
Lao Tzu, 130
large firms, 7, 57.
See also specific entries
Lauder, Estée, 3
learning experience, failure as,
38, 39. See also failure
legal personhood, 163
legal structure, entrepreneurial
organization, 163–165
legal zoom, 117, 138, 164
length of time
growth in terms of, 213–216
planning, 229–230
Lennon, 23
Levi’s, 128
Levitt, Arthur, 106
limited company, 164
Limited liability companies
(LLC), 164
Lincoln, Abraham, 38
line structure, for entrepreneur-
ial teams, 159–160
LinkedIn, 47, 98
259
Index
Miller, Arthur, 102
Miller, John, 219–220
Miller Blueprint, 219–220
Miller Imaging and Digital
Solutions, 220
mindset, entrepreneurs, 14–16
MIT (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology), 7
mobile devices, marketing
strategies, 99
Mona Lisa, 74
money. See also funding
business type and need for,
185–186
finding, 182–186. See also
investors
invested, 181
myths, 185–186
operational funds, 180
potential, 181–182
real, 182
reputational, 198
restricted, 180–181
smart, 198
sources, 183–185
sustainable revenue model,
172–174
types/forms, 179–182
moral risks, stage-gate model of
product development and, 118
Moroni, Daniele (success story
of), 51–54
motivational factors, 14
Mulcahy, Anne M., 216
Mullfjället, 33–34, 36
music industry, reinvention of
products, 127–128
public relations (PR), 107–108
research, 91–97
examples of walking around,
96–97
overview, 91–92
personal, 92–96
selling (as challenge), 102–106
to Internet generation,
104–105
problems in, 102–104
social media age and,
105–106
strategies development,
97–102
Internet and, 99–100
Internet and cell phone apps,
100–101
mobile devices, 99
target market, 89
technology changes and, 86
terminology, 87–88
marketing plan, 235–237
mass media, changes in, 131
Mattel Toys, 3
McCartney, 23
McDonald’s, 21, 79
Mead, Margaret, 132
measurement issues
failure, 39–40
success, 39–40
Mercedes Benz, 108
Merger and acquisition (M&A),
172
metamorphosis approach,
growth and, 218–221
mickey mouse, 41
Microsoft, 111
260
Index
non-consumers, behavior of,
132
nonemployer business, 22
nonfinancial reinforcement,
157
O
observation, ethnographic, 96
on-site advertising, 22
open innovation, 114
operational funds, 180
opportunistic entrepreneurs,
12–13
opportunity creator, entrepre-
neurs as, 17–19
opportunity(ies). See also idea(s)
attention and, 63
attitudes toward life and
(Birch’s study), 18–19
curiosity and, 63
demand and, 60–61
and entrepreneur, 28–29
for innovation, industrial
change and, 130–132
new models, 130–132
as market imperfections, 17
success and, 44–45
opportunity recognition, 17–19
optimism, success and, 43
O’Reilly, Tim, 172
organization, building
benefits, 156–158
compensation, 156–158
entrepreneurial management,
165–166
entrepreneurial team
structure, 158–162
Musk, Elon, 114, 122, 173
myth(s), entrepreneurial, 2
N
NASCAR, 60
national innovation systems, for
entrepreneurs, 10–12
national wealth creation, entre-
preneurship for, 16, 19
natural disaster, 67
near-term objectives, 45
necessity, 12
necessity-based firms, 21
necessity entrepreneurs, 12–13,
20, 21, 29
needs. See also desires; fears
idea generation and
examples, 61–62
identification, 59–61
negative cash flow, 126
Netflix, 78
networking
rules for, 49–50
success and, 47–50
new business unit, 7
newness, degrees of, product/
service innovation, 125–127
New Orleans, 22–23
newspaper industry, 131
Newsweek, 27
New York Stock Exchange, 155
New York Times, 1, 74, 131
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 111
9/11 disaster, 179, 217
Nokia, 217–218
NOLO Press, 144–145
261
Index
P
Packard, David, 68
Paris Air Show, 10
partnerships, strategic, 119
passion, creativity and, 64, 74
patents, 138
PayPal, 23, 101, 103, 128
pay walls, 131
Penny, James Cash, 206
Pensar Syd, 33, 34f, 35
People Express Airlines, 146,
147, 150, 160, 202
Pepsi, 85, 138
perceived value, of products/
service, 119
performance
growth and, 207
planning effect on, 228
personal anecdotes, market
research, 92–96
case example, 93
customers, information about,
94–95
ethnographic observation, 96
watching and listening, 94–95
personality, 65
entrepreneurs, 13–14
personality factors, 14
personal reasons, for entrepre-
neurship, 20
Persson, Erling, 4
pharmaceutical industry
early-stage development, 121
Philips, Bruce, 7–8
photoshop software, 22. See also
3D printing
informal structure, 161–162
line form, 159–160
project approach, 161
family business, 154–156
goals, impact on hiring, 155
hiring of family members,
long-term impact, 156
overview, 154–155
legal structure decisions,
163–165
new employees, hiring,
146–151
big errors, 147–148
buy-sell agreement, 148
case example, 150–151
characteristics of good,
148–150
decision-making about,
151–153
firing, 152–153
rejection, 152
new firm governance,
162–163
overview, 141
stock options, 156–158
venture creation, 142–145
entrepreneurial team,
142–144
other issues, 144–145
outsourcing, 145
Osborne Computer?, 75
other people’s money (OPM),
188
outcomes, of entrepreneurial
dreams, 2–3
outsourcing, 121, 145
overconfidence, 243
overshot customers, 132
262
Index
product/service innovation,
112–116, 202–203. See also
growth; innovation
case study, 134–137
commercialization and,
125
competitive advantages, 121
degrees of newness, 125–127
entrepreneurs vs. inventors,
113–114
industrial change as
opportunity for, 130–132
new models, 130–132
in marketing and distribution
(e-commerce), 128–130
need for, 123–127
outsourcing, 121
pricing, role of, 119–120
reinventing industrial
products, 127–128
stage-gate model, 114–120
advanced development
stage, 118–120
preliminary and detailed
assessments, 116–118
using, 116–120
types of, 120–123
business model innovation,
122–123
focus innovation, 121–123
innovation impact, 123
process innovation, 122
products/services
copyrights, 138
demand for, 85
expensive (examples),
119–120
new, idea generation for,
62–63
Picasso, Pablo, 23
Pinterest, 104
place, 90
planned behavior, theory of, 15
plan(s)/planning, 223–245.
See also business plan
business plan, 225
by/for entrepreneur, 230–231
chocolate pralines (case
study), 243–245
effect on performance, 228
feeling, 227–228
general comments, 242
length of time, 229–230
long-term, 224
need for, 225–228
overview, 223–225
timing, 228–229
writing, 226–227
Poirot, Hercule, 43
polaroid camera, 65
Positive cash flow, 126
potential market, 87, 88–89.
See also marketing
potential money, 181–182
preliminary assessment, prod-
uct development, 116–118
price/pricing, 58–59, 90
role of, 119–120
strategic, 134
price setting, 90–91
primary marketing data, 95–96
print media, changes in, 131
probationary period, 152
process failure, 38
process innovation, 122
product, 90
263
Index
R
radical innovation, 123
rapid growth, 208
R&D, 126
Reagan, Ronald, 8
real money, 182
recession, 8
regional Advantage: Culture and
Competition in Silicon Valley
and Route 128, 9
regions, economic development
of (Birch’s study), 9–10
reinvention, industrial products,
127–128
rejection(s), 110
of applicants/employees, 152
reputational money, 198
research, 126
entrepreneurs styles, 14–15
marketing, 91–97
examples of walking around,
96–97
overview, 91–92
personal, 92–96
researchers, entrepreneurship
success defined by, 42–43
restricted money, 180–181
revenue component, business
model, 76
revenue model, 76
sustainable, 172–174
revenues, 113, 165
growth in, 212
reward-based funding, 197
Rice, Robert A., Jr., 183
risks, stage-gate model of
product development and, 118
new trends for, 132–133
overview, 112–113
patents, 138
perceived value, 119
pricing, role of, 119–120
successful, conditions for,
133–134
trade secrets, 138
viable, 113
professional corporation, 164
profit
defined, 76, 212
growth in, 212
profitability
concept design for, 75–78
viable business concept,
76–77
as entrepreneurial goal,
26, 27
proforma financial statements,
179
project structure, entrepreneur-
ial team, 161
promotion, 90
proprietor, 164
prototyping, 118
public relations (PR),
107–108, 215
public relations (PR) firm,
153
public service announcement
(PSA), 107
Q
quickbooks, 170
Quigley, Patrick Dupre (as case
study), 27–28
264
Index
sewing machine, invention
of, 2
Shakespeare, William, 124
Shark Tank, 11
side job, 22
Sisodia, Raj, 42
small business administration,
188
Small Business Innovation
Research (SBIR) grant
program, 191
small business owner, 25, 27
small business venture, 25
small firms, 7, 9, 57.
See also specific entries
Birch’s study, 7, 9, 10–11, 25
smart money, 198
smart phones, 132
Smith, Adam, 17
Snapchat Periscope, 104
Snow White, 67
social media
advertising and, 106–107
marketing strategies, 98,
105–106
selling strategies and,
104–105
The Social Network, 1
soft launches, 118
sole trader, 164
Sol Rouge (www.solrouge .com),
205
SpaceX, 173
spotify, 128, 173
Squarespace, 106
Squareup, 103, 128
Robinson, Ken, 114
Roddick, Anita, 4
Roddick, Dame Anita, 3
Rogaška, 5
Romeo and Juliet, 124
Rörstrand, 4
Royal Albert, 5
Royal Copenhagen, 4
Royal Doulton, 5
S
salaries, regulation of, 144–145
sales growth, 212
Salk, Jonas, 12, 15, 19
Salk Institute in La Jolla, 12
Salvatori, Livio (success story
of), 51–54
Schumpeter, J., 6, 17–18, 25, 29
self-employed entrepreneurs,
22–25. See also entrepreneur(s)
context for, 22–25
self-governance, 150
self-made billionaires, 3. See
also entrepreneur(s); specific
entries
self-motivated employees,
149–150
selling. See also marketing
as challenge, 102–106
to internet generation,
104–105
problems in, 102–104
rejections and, 102
social media age and, 105–106
sensitivity analysis, 178–179
Seraphic Fire, 28
265
Index
measurement issues in,
39–40
in entrepreneurial context,
40–41
entrepreneurial goals and,
45–46
entrepreneurship researchers
perspective, 42–43
Finland and Sweden, case
example from, 33–36, 34f
fun with, 50–51
as goal based, 45
growth and, 203–204
historical perspectives, 44
Italy, case example from,
51–54, 53f
long-term view of, 42
networking and, 47–50
opportunity and, 44–45
optimism and, 43
overview, 4
product development and, 115
vs. failure, 40
wealth and, 46–47
successful, defined, 33
successful entrepreneur, 37
successful intelligence, 43
successful products/services,
conditions for, 133–134
success vs. failure prediction
model, 43
sustainable revenue model,
172–174
Sweden (case example of suc-
cessful venture), 33–36, 34f
Swift, Taylor, 23, 128
SXSW (South by Southwest), 10
Sydney Morning Herald, 1
stage-gate model, of product
development, 114–120
advanced development stage,
118–120
preliminary and detailed
assessments, 116–118
risks-assosiated, 118
stages, 115–116
using, 116–120
Stanford Technology Ventures
Program, 9
Stanley, Francis Edgar, 19
Stanley, Freelan Oscar, 19
The Stanley Motor Carriage
Company, 19
Starbucks, 79
start some good, 198
start-up venture, 157
Star Wars films, 64
Stewart, Martha, 3, 4
stock options, organization,
156–158
Straits Times, 1
strategic partnerships, 119
strategic pricing, 134
subchapter S corporations, 164
Subercaseaux, Emiliana, 3
success, 3, 19, 242–245. See also
failure; growth
action-oriented view, 43
Archimedes, 44
awareness and, 43
chocolate pralines (case
study), 243–245
conceptual model, 244f, 245
defined(ing), 4, 37
by firm founders, 41–42
266
Index
as concept sources, 72–74
new, for products/services,
132–133
trip Advisor, 129
Trojan Family, 48
turnover, growth in, 212
tv advertising, 131
Twitter, 22, 27, 73, 76, 98, 99,
101, 104
advertising and, 106–107
Tyson, Mike, 224
U
U.S. Census Bureau, 7, 22, 91
U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission, 106
U.S. Small Business
Administration, 7
understanding, idea generation
and, 73
Understanding the Myth of High
Growth Firms: The Theory of
the Greater Fool, 21
unpredictability, 65
unprofitable high growth
strategy, 215
USPS, 173
V
value-added tax (VAT), 165
van Rijn, Rembrandt
Harmenszoon, 23
variable costs (VC), 178
venture capital (VC), 171–172,
189, 192–193, 203
T
Takeshi Mitarai, 3
Tanga, 42
target market, 87, 89. See also
marketing
team, entrepreneurial, 142–144
team structure, entrepreneurial,
158–162
informal structure, 161–162
line form, 159–160
project approach, 161
technology changes, impact on
marketing, 86
technology entrepreneurs, 21
technology entrepreneurship, 9
Tesla, Nikola, 2, 6, 70, 114, 119,
122, 127
testing, 118
Texas longhorns (Babineaux’s
painting), 24f
Thomas, Michael Tilson, 28
Thorwöste, Peter, 4
3D printing, 22
3G Capital, 5
timing
business idea and, 74–75
cash flow and, 177–179
length of
growth in terms of, 213–216
planning, 229–230
plan/planning, 228–229
tolerance of ambiguity, 65
tourism industry, innovation at,
129–130
trade secrets, 138
trends
267
Index
wealth creation
economic, 46
as entrepreneurial goal, 16,
19, 26
websites, 101
Wedgwood, Josiah, 4, 5
Wedgwood china, 4, 5
Wedgwood pottery, 5
Welsh, Jack, 217
West Side Story, 124
Wiebe, Richard, 129
WiFi technology, 131, 173
Wikipedia, 72–73
Winfrey, Oprah, 3, 4, 97
women entrepreneurs, 3.
See also entrepreneur(s)
women’s World Banking, 8
word-of-mouth advertising,
106
power of, 118
word-of-web advertising,
106–107
power of, 118
World Bank, 198
World Wide Web, 129
would-be entrepreneur,
2, 68–69, 169. See also
entrepreneur(s)
exercise for, 68–69
information resources for, 95
WWRD group, 5
www.booking.com, 129
X
Xerox Corporation, 216
X Game, 201
venture creation, 142–145
entrepreneurial team, 142–144
other issues, 144–145
outsourcing, 145
start-up team, 142
venture’s money search, 193–194
viable business concept. See also
business concept model
creativity and, 65–66, 71–72
designing, 76–77
VIE (www.viewinery.com), 205
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang,
142, 146
W
Wagner, Richard, 23
Walker, Madam C. J., 2, 3
walking-around market re-
search, 95–96
examples, 96–97
Wal-Mart, 88, 121, 133, 143, 154
Walt Disney, 67
wants/desires. See also fears;
needs
identification, idea generation
and, 59–61
Warby Parker, 78, 173
Warhol, Andy, 23
Warren Buffett effect, 198
Waterford Crystal, 5
Watson, Thomas, Jr., 38, 153
Wayfair, 100
wealth
defined, 46
economic, 46–47
success and, 46–47
268
Index
Z
Zappos.com, 149–150, 158, 201
Zuckerberg, Mark, 3, 4
Y
Young, Jeremy, 42
YouTube, 22, 104
Yo-Yo Ma, 64, 74
Yunus, Muhammad, Dr., 8, 68

doc_118731865.pdf