Best of
Entrepreneurship

2009

Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle


Dan Senor - 2009
    Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion dollar question: How is it that Israel -- a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources-- produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK? With the savvy of foreign policy insiders, Senor and Singer examine the lessons of the country's adversity-driven culture, which flattens hierarchy and elevates informality-- all backed up by government policies focused on innovation. In a world where economies as diverse as Ireland, Singapore and Dubai have tried to re-create the "Israel effect", there are entrepreneurial lessons well worth noting. As America reboots its own economy and can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressive, surprising clues.

Freedom, Inc.: Free Your Employees and Let Them Lead Your Business to Higher Productivity, Profits, and Growth


Brian M. Carney - 2009
    . ."Whether in troubled economic times or during years of prosperity, there is a proven way for companies to boost productivity, profits, and growth. Remarkably, it costs nothing whether cost is measured in terms of monetary resources or time and is simply based on the belief that, if only people can be free to act in the best interests of their company, the results will be tremendous. "Freedom, Inc." presents the evidence that this is not the Pollyannaish wish of a few dreamers, but a reality built by bottom-line-focused leaders. . . ." The culture of freedom works and "Freedom, Inc." reveals the secrets of a successful business paradigm based on a trusting, nonhierarchical, liberated environment. The visionary leaders profiled here performed near-miracles in driving their companies to unheard-of levels of success, often from unlikely or disheartening beginnings. Businesses as diverse as insurance company USAA, winemaker Sea Smoke Cellars, Gore & Associates, advertising agency The Richardson Group, Harley-Davidson, and Sun Hydraulics have had the insight and courage to challenge long-held management beliefs about human nature and employees and radically depart from the traditional command-and-control structures, rules, and policies. By freeing up the individual initiative and risk-taking instincts of every employee, these companies showed they could dramatically outperform their rivals in an array of fiercely competitive industries. By listening to employees instead of telling them what to do, by treating them as equals and not limiting information through a trickle-down hierarchy, and by encouraging a culture in which employees have commitments (something chosen) as opposed to jobs (something imposed), these companies liberated their workers to fulfill their own individual potential, which has led to more productive, loyal, and engaged workers, as well as significant measurable profits and growth."

Kidpreneurs: Young Entrepreneurs With Big Ideas!


Adam Toren - 2009
    Our goal with Kidpreneurs is to outline some basic tools and strategies kids can use to gain some valuable experience in starting, managing, and growing a successful business venture. Through easy-to-understand basic principles and a creative approach, we outline some key techniques that will have a powerful and positive impact on your child's ability to understand entrepreneurship. Using kid-friendly design and illustration, we break down some of the major points of entrepreneurship, so your child can have fun as he or she learns. Also, your child will enhance his or her decision-making skills by trying out simple businesses as he or she grows up. Tomorrow’s future starts today. Share Kidpreneurs with your children and help plant the seeds for a stronger future.

Get Your Business to Work!: 7 Steps to Earning More, Working Less and Living the Life You Want


George Hedley - 2009
    Get Your Business to Work! 7 Steps to Earning More, Working Less and Living the Life You Want uses tried-and-true methods to help fledgling business owners as well as seasoned ones who are just looking to increase capital and productivity. The book offers a step-by-step process to help small business owners get what they want: profits, wealth, and freedom.Hedley explains where owners go wrong at each stage while growing their companies and details steps in the book to show how to make the inner-workings of the business more predictable in order to eliminate micromanaging and allow for maximum profitability with minimum stress.Get Your Business to Work! identifies areas owners struggle in the most:• Trusting employees and forgoing micromanagement• Satisfying customers• Writing business plans and implementing systems• Marketing and sales• Pricing and achieving overhead and profit goalsMost companies never get to the next level because the owner isn’t willing to make the necessary changes to make it happen. Through sound advice, as well as interactive exercises, Get Your Business to Work! encourages readers to work toward financial stability and independence by setting clear goals and following through.

The Coffee Boys' Step-By-Step Guide to Setting Up and Managing Your Own Coffee Bar: How to Open a Coffee Bar That Actually Lasts and Makes Money...


John Richardson - 2009
    From the authors of the acclaimed 'Wake Up and Smell the Profit', this practical guide to setting up a coffee bar or sandwich bar includes advice on location, raising finance and devising a marketing plan.

How to Run Your Business by the Book: A Biblical Blueprint to Bless Your Business


Dave Anderson - 2009
    Not only will you master timeless business principles based on the world's bestselling book, you'll build a foundation for your business that leads to long-term success.This is a refreshing return to commonsense business basics, based on leadership lessons peppered throughout the Good Book. In these turbulent times, quality leadership is the key to surviving and thriving in the business world. You'll learn what the Bible has to say about hiring and training people, managing money, creating a leadership vision, balancing work and life, and achieving your most ambitious business goals.Includes practical, proven business guidance gleaned from the Bible Features smart business guidance like the Ten Commandments for elevating your people skills Shows you four vital steps for creating a tough-love culture of accountability Dave Anderson is also the author of Up Your Business!, If You Don't Make Waves, You'll Drown and How to Deal with Difficult CustomersBest of all, you don't need to be familiar with the Bible to profit from these wise and timeless principles. All you need is a heart open to biblical wisdom and a willingness to lead with courage.

279 Days to Overnight Success: An Unconventional Journey to Full-Time Writing


Chris Guillebeau - 2009
    

Introduction to Entrepreneurship


Donald F. Kuratko - 2009
    Using exercises and case presentations, you can apply your own ideas and develop useful entrepreneurial skills. Cases and examples found throughout the text present the new venture creations or corporate innovations that permeate the world economy today. This book will be your guide to understanding the entrepreneurial challenges of tomorrow.

Performance Breakthrough: The Four Secrets of Passionate Organizations


Mike Goldman - 2009
    That's like an engine running at less than one-third of its power! How can a team reach its potential, or even come anywhere close, with that level of engagement? Now imagine the impact of injecting more passion into your team. Imagine a company where eight out of ten people are truly engaged. What would this mean to your team's productivity, morale, retention, and ability to recruit top talent?Revised and enhanced from the popular first edition, Performance Breakthrough reveals the four secrets for creating a more passionate, productive, and profitable organization. You'll find that the ideas discussed are not expensive. In fact, many can be executed without spending a dime.This book's message is communicated in the form of a fictional story to help make these ideas real and implementable, as opposed to fuzzy concepts. That is augmented by valuable new case studies, summaries, checklists, and other tools that will help you create positive energy, find passion, and achieve your own Performance Breakthrough!Mike Goldman is a nationally recognized speaker and consultant with over twenty-five years of success at coaching organizations of all sizes and missions, from the local entrepreneur to the Fortune 500. Throughout his career at Accenture and Deloitte Consulting, he has helped Verizon, Disney, Polo Ralph Lauren, Chanel, Kmart, Dillard's, Liz Claiborne, Levi Strauss, and numerous other outstanding companies. In 2007, Mike founded Performance Breakthrough to help mid-sized companies break through the inevitable, predictable barriers to growth.performance-breakthrough.com

Pitching Hacks: How to pitch startups to investors


Venture Hacks - 2009
    We’ve founded companies like Epinions; helped start companies that are backed by Sequoia, Benchmark, and Kleiner Perkins; raised $100M or so for startups; and invested another $20M in about 12 companies. This book summarizes some of the lessons we’ve learned about pitching companies to investors.

Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model


John W. Mullins - 2009
    And you've crafted a business plan so detailed it's a work of art. Don't get too attached to it.As John Mullins and Randy Komisar explain in Getting to Plan B, new businesses are fraught with uncertainty. To succeed, you must change the plan in real time as the inevitable challenges arise. In fact, studies show that entrepreneurs who stick slavishly to their Plan A stand a greater chance of failing-and that many successful businesses barely resemble their founders' original idea.The authors provide a rigorous process for stress testing your Plan A and determining how to alter it so your business makes money, solves customers' needs, and endures. You'll discover strategies for:-Identifying the leap-of-faith assumptions hidden in your plan-Testing those assumptions and unearthing why the plan might not work-Reconfiguring the five components of your business model-revenue model, gross margin model, operating model, working capital model, and investment model-to create a sounder Plan B.Filled with success stories and cautionary tales, this book offers real cases illustrating the authors' unique process. Whether your idea is for a start-up or a new business unit within your organization, Getting to Plan B contains the road map you need to reach success.

Brand New World: How To Reach Billions, Not Millions


Max Lenderman - 2009
    Russian Standard is still the #1 vodka and is now the largest consumer bank, issuing 77 percent of credit cards in the country. Silk Street market, the epicentre of piracy and counterfeiting in China, launches its own brand. In a press release, the new company announces that anyone using its “brand” outside the market will be held liable. A Thai company reaches millions of consumers by installing combs in the tangled wires above the streets of Bangkok to promote its hair-care products.We live in a brand new world, where marketing is taking on incredible new forms, especially in the hyper-developing “BRIC” countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China. The almost unimaginable economic growth in these nations is revolutionizing marketing across the planet. Drawing from over two years of extensive travel and research, award- inning creative director Max Lenderman shares groundbreaking marketing strategies and business models that every savvy marketer and corporate visionary needs to understand. Brisk, fascinating and a little shocking, Brand New World is both a window and a mirror into the future of global marketing.Brand New World Market Facts:• To combat piracy, Adobe released sponsored free versions of its software for in China. The Gillette logo appears next to the “cut” command. Xerox sponsors “copy”; Citibank subsidizes “save”; and Tide funds “clear.”• QQ, a Chinese social networking site, boasts 300 million active accounts and a total revenue of $523 million—about four times higher than the revenues of Facebook.• Similar to Los Angelenos, whose car payments can be three times higher than their rent, Russian teens often spend more on their belt buckles than on the rest of their wardrobes.

Borrowing Brilliance: The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others


David Kord Murray - 2009
    In "Borrowing Brilliance" he explains the origins and evolution of a business idea by showing readers how new ideas are merely the combinations of existing ideas. Since brilliance is actually borrowed, it's easily within reach. It's really a matter of knowing where to borrow the materials and how to put them together that determines creative ability. Murray presents a simple Six-Step process that anyone can use to build business innovation: Step One: "Defining"?Define the problem you?re trying to solve. Step Two: "Borrowing"?Borrow ideas from places with a similar problem. Step Three: "Combining"?Connect and combine these borrowed ideas. Step Four: "Incubating"?Allow the combinations to incubate into a solution. Step Five: "Judging"?Identify the strength and weakness of the solution. Step Six: "Enhancing"?Eliminate the weak points while enhancing the strong ones. Each chapter features real-life examples of brilliant borrowers, including profiles of Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the Google guys), Bill Gates, George Lucas, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and other creative thinkers. Murray used these methods to re-create his own career and he shows how you can harness them to find your own creative solutions. First you copy, then you create. And the further from your own company you look, the more creative the solution. In the new bible of business innovation, renowned creativity expert David Kord Murray reveals the key to the creative process: borrowing. There is no such thing as a truly original idea. Great thinkers throughout history have understood this and used it to their advantage. Bill Gates ?borrowed brilliance? to create Microsoft, Steve Jobs ?borrowed? to create the Mac, and long before that Sir Isaac Newton used similar thinking techniques to arrive at his theory of gravity. "Borrowing Brilliance" is challenges our notions of intellectual property and authorship, explores the evolution of a creative idea, and takes us step-by-step through Murray's own unique thought process, which combines analytical and non-traditional thinking techniques. Murray's six step ?borrowing? process is one that anyone can master to build business innovation. Murray combines practical lessons with stories from his own career, as well as the careers of brilliant borrowers past and present. Most people believe creativity is a gift, that it can?t be taught, that it's innate in your thinking process and either you have it or you don?t. But Murray lifts the veil off the creative process, bringing it from the shadows of the subconscious mind into the conscious world. Creativity is not the result of divine intervention; it is something that can be learned and it is easily within reach.

Sell Anything!


Chet Holmes - 2009
    

The Business Devotional: 365 Inspirational Thoughts on Management, Leadership & Motivation


Lillian Hayes Martin - 2009
    This collection of daily devotionals provides motivational words on career growth and positive change, along with guidance on both day-to-day and long-term decision-making in the workplace.

The Flipside


Adam J. Jackson - 2009
    It shows that every cloud can have a silver lining.A setback can change the course of your life. But why should the change be a negative one? Challenges and obstacles are part of life, but while some wilt under pressure, others rise to the occasion. Could it be there is a method for overcoming adversity and turning failure into success?The flipside is the hidden opportunity inside each problem - an opportunity so powerful that it dwarfs the original difficulty. THE FLIPSIDE is full of life-affirming stories from around the world. It will change the way you look at adversity, and help you turn setbacks into new chances.

Freelance Design in Practice


Cathy Fisel - 2009
    But very quickly, such projects begin to have legal and financial ramifications. Freelance Design in Practice addresses these issues as well as explaining exactly what it takes to create a full-time freelance business. For both active freelancers and those who aspire to it, Freelance Design in Practice offers insight and advice from working professionals who have successfully jumped the many hurdles on the road to becoming solo practitioners.

Complexity Science and Social Entrepreneurship: Adding Social Value Through Systems Thinking


Jeffrey A. Goldstein - 2009
    Case studies, models, simulations, and theoretical papers advance both theory and practice, providing an innovative and comprehensive look at these dynamic topics. Written by complexity theorists, international development practitioners, and experts in a variety of other disciplines, this must-have book is mandatory reading for everyone interested in this newly developing field.

The SWOT Analysis: Using your Strength to overcome Weaknesses, Using Opportunities to overcome Threats


Lawrence G. Fine - 2009
    This book shows how to use SWOT analysis to better your organization, your group and your life

alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack MA and the Creation of the World's Biggest Online Marketplace


Liu Shiying - 2009
    Ma's rise to prominence presents a riveting story: Despite growing up in China during the Cultural Revolution—in a period of total state control of the economy—he developed the keen entrepreneurial instincts that propelled him to billionaire status and enabled him to build a company outside the usual government channels. These instincts and habits incorporated martial arts training and allowed him to recognize, early on, that the Internet could leverage his company to rapid growth and also transform the way business is done around the world. Alibaba.com, where businesses can buy and sell everything from air beds to zippers, started with a modest initial investment of $60,000 and has grown exponentially since its founding in 1999 to become the world's biggest business-to-business Web site. In 2007 it became the second largest IPO in history (after Google), and Fast Company has named it one of the world's most innovative companies. As a result, smart investors and technology insiders will be keeping a close eye on Alibaba for years to come. Whether you're seeking to understand China's meteoric rise, or just searching for the next Google, Yahoo!, or Amazon, Alibaba is crucial reading.

Literature And The Economics Of Liberty


Paul Cantor - 2009
    

The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life


David Stark - 2009
    This can be disorienting and disconcerting. Because of this, many organizations devote considerable resources to limiting and clarifying the logics used for evaluating worth. But as David Stark argues, firms would often be better off, especially in managing change, if they allowed multiple logics of worth and did not necessarily discourage uncertainty. In fact, in many cases multiple orders of worth are unavoidable, so organizations and firms should learn to harness the benefits of such heterarchy rather than seeking to purge it. Stark makes this argument with ethnographic case studies of three companies attempting to cope with rapid change: a machine-tool company in late and postcommunist Hungary, a new-media startup in New York during and after the collapse of the Internet bubble, and a Wall Street investment bank whose trading room was destroyed on 9/11. In each case, the friction of competing criteria of worth promoted an organizational reflexivity that made it easier for the company to change and deal with market uncertainty. Drawing on John Dewey's notion that perplexing situations provide opportunities for innovative inquiry, Stark argues that the dissonance of diverse principles can lead to discovery.