Entrepreneurship: Theory, Process, Practice

This edition provides a systematic, process-oriented overview of entrepreneurship, from startup to maturation, with an eye on the latest research developments in the field. It is based on developing a theoretical foundation, then learning the processes needed for a successful venture, and finally experiencing the launch of a venture in practice. This text provides the most comprehensive and theoretically sound approach to the study of entrepreneurship. All of the latest research is highlighted for the instructors in order to remain on the cutting edge for their students.

The MindTap® digital learning solution provides new and updated cases, designed to help students think and act like entrepreneurs, whether in a start-up or corporate setting. Experiential Exercises give students an opportunity to test and investigate their understanding of chapter principles through self-scoring assessments, skills inventories and related applications.

A Typology of Distinctive Entrepreneurial Journeys: We see that entrepreneurs create a wide variety of ventures. These include everything from giants like Uber and Amazon to a small local artisan brewery. Entrepreneurs vary in numerous ways, including how they confront risks, expand in the market, produce innovations, seek outside capital, involve family members and incorporate new technologies. Each entrepreneur will experience the entrepreneurial journey in a different and unique way. In fact, there is so much diversity in what gets created that it becomes difficult to provide one set definition of an entrepreneurial firm.

Diversity in Entrepreneurship: Each chapter contains a special boxed story that concerns a diversity subject. Topics include diversity in venture capital, diversity in franchising, minority funding, black entrepreneurs, disability diversity, gender diversity, age diversity and diversity in thought.

Entrepreneurial Hustle: This new concept is defined as an entrepreneur’s urgent, unorthodox actions that are intended to be useful in addressing immediate challenges and opportunities under conditions of uncertainty. In a study, the researchers used an experimental approach to assess the impact of an entrepreneur’s hustle on venture stakeholders and found that entrepreneurial hustle positively influenced stakeholder perceptions of the entrepreneur’s leadership effectiveness and a venture’s legitimacy.

Entrepreneurial Coachability: Mentorship or coaching from other experienced individuals has become essential to entrepreneurs and their fledgling ventures because it improves an entrepreneur’s likelihood of success. Therefore, an entrepreneur’s “coachability” becomes another critical skill that needs to be developed. Founder coachability is defined as the degree to which an entrepreneur seeks, considers and integrates feedback.

The Impact of Social Entrepreneurship: Because practitioners have questioned whether social entrepreneurship actually yields more meaningful social benefits than traditional state, NGO or entrepreneurial initiatives, there have been recent developments to examine the outcomes of social entrepreneurship, and these are examined in this edition.

Effective Entrepreneurial Teams: While much of entrepreneurship in the past has been largely associated with a solo entrepreneur, the more current state of entrepreneurship embraces the effective entrepreneurial team. It is not easy to get the right people for an effective entrepreneurial team; however, the development of that team is essential in today’s world as venture capitalists consider the entrepreneurial team to be most important when the time comes to make the investment decision on a new venture.

Strategic Bootstrapping: This mode of financing allows an entrepreneur to found and build a venture from personal funds or the operating revenues of the new company. Examples of techniques employed because of the decision to bootstrap include using credit cards, drawing upon home equity, sweat equity, taking loans from family, and investing salary from one’s regular job.

The Challenges of Blitzscaling: While traditional scaling strategies move along based on the actual growth of the venture, “blitzscaling” tries to push the growth faster by prioritizing speed over efficiency in an environment of uncertainty. For most technology start-ups, the general appeal of blitzscaling is that it leads to rapid growth on a global scale. This type of growth enables new technology start-ups to achieve a first-mover advantage in new global markets. A venture incurs a massive amount of risk when blitzscaling its business or product.