Entrepreneurship

This open access book explores the intriguing narrative of Nikola Corporation's startup journey in this insightful case study, examining its rapid ascent and subsequent decline from both a narrative and argumentative perspective. Founded by Trevor Milton, Nikola initially garnered investor interest with promises of a cleaner, sustainable alternative to diesel trucks. However, the company's surge in valuation was short-lived, as accusations from a short seller triggered a trust crisis, exposing alleged deception and raising doubts about the company's technology claims.This case study particularly focuses on the nuances of startup communication, emphasizing the critical importance of effective and trustworthy strategic communication for emerging tech ventures. It provides an in-depth look at the methods and tools necessary for startups to navigate initial skepticism and data limitations without exposing themselves to potential crises. Key insights include crafting compelling startup stories while maintaining trustworthiness, meeting investor information needs in an argumentatively convincing structure, recognizing the risks of blind faith in charismatic founders, and implementing internal checks and balances to safeguard against deception.Nikola's story serves as a cautionary tale, offering valuable lessons for entrepreneurs, investors, and scholars alike. This comprehensive examination sheds light on the challenges faced by startups dependent on emerging technologies and ambitious promises, making it an indispensable addition to the reading list of entrepreneurs.

This guide complements traditional project management by focusing on the critical pre-project stage. It addresses a major challenge: only 12% of projects finish on time and within budget, often due to poor initial pre-project analysis. This leads to wasted resources. The content offers proven best practices for implementing ISO 56007 recommendations, enhancing project calibration, selection, and overall success rates.Liberating innovators from the constraints of traditional business plans, the guide suggests, along with ISO 56007, a "Concept/Opportunity Case" as an investor-friendly alternative. This template is rooted in the robust IpOp Decision Tree, an ISO 56007-recommended checklist of 11 fundamental questions to thoroughly address essential decision-makers' concerns. This rigorous method ensures reliable project selection and optimal resource allocation.The IpOp Model serves as a structured roadmap, enabling project managers and innovators to transform ideas into compelling projects. It provides clear guidance for making informed decisions, whether to pivot or abandon projects that aren¿t viable. By following ISO 56007 recommendations, the IpOp Model helps navigate uncertainties and manage critical project factors effectively.Ideal for decision-makers, project managers, executives, professionals, intrapreneurs, and entrepreneurs engaged in project management and innovation, this guide is an essential tool for any pre-project analysis and for turning innovative ideas into successful projects.

Offering perspectives on the entrepreneurial behaviour of family businesses in emerging economies, the chapters collected here present a systematic analysis focusing on gender, culture, policy, issues of succession, growth and economic impact.

Essential advice for anyone aspiring to start up a technology company, based on decades of business experience.In Tech Startup Toolkit, you’ll discover the good, the bad, and the ugly of succeeding with a tech startup. Author Jothy Rosenberg reveals the insights he’s learned from an entrepreneurial career that’s seen both $100 million sales, dramatic failures, and everything in between. Tech Startup Toolkit gives you concrete, actionable advice on how to: • Succeed as a first-time CEO • Pitch and raise money from various types of investors • Develop a go-to-market strategy • Create a strong positive culture • Understand what makes a VC tick • Write an elevator pitch • Understand investment deal terms • Hone and align teams • Effectively downsize or wind down a company • Position a company to be acquired In Tech Startup Toolkit Jothy tells stories from his incredible career that will give guidance and inspiration to anyone who’s ever thought of creating or running a company. Every personal story teaches a vital lesson for any would-be startup founder, ensuring you avoid the pitfalls that end less-prepared companies. Foreword by Vivjan Myrto. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology Why do eight out of ten tech startups fail? Is it inevitable? In Tech Startup Toolkit, nine-time tech startup founder Jothy Rosenberg tells you how to beat the odds. Part memoir and part survival guide, this book delivers battle-tested, unvarnished advice on capital, culture, boards, marketing, and management. About the book Tech Startup Toolkit covers everything a new founder needs to ensure a great idea can become a stable tech company that’s ripe for acquisition. In 31 short anecdotes from Jothy’s extensive experience, you’ll learn how to pitch investors, develop a go-to-market strategy, and build the leadership skills that really matter for a great startup CEO. And since forewarned is forearmed, you’ll also find strategies to handle challenges like funding loss, competition, and unpredictable crises like Covid-19 that break lesser startups. What's inside • Succeed as a first-time CEO • Create a strong positive culture • Understand what makes a VC tick • Position a company to be acquired About the reader For prospective founders, early-stage teams, and anyone interested in tech entrepreneurship. About the author Jothy Rosenberg has been an incorrigible entrepreneur since 1988. Formerly the VP of Borland’s developer division, Jothy has founded and run nine technology startups, two of which had $100 million exits. Table of Contents PART 1 1 Scratching the startup itch: How I became an incorrigible entrepreneur 2 What makes you think you are CEO material? 3 A venture-backed turnaround: A dangerous place to be 4 The founding team. Who’s in and who’s not? PART 2 5 Friends and family, angels, venture capital, or strategic? 6 Angels: Your bridge financing solution 7 The art of pitching to institutional investors 8 Investors aren’t your friends 9 Understand the VC business model. Raise money faster 10 Seed: The first priced round 11 Term sheets: An institutional investor wants to invest in you 12 Due Diligence: An exam you must pass PART 3 13 Your business model. The beating heart of your business 14 Getting to a minimum viable product with lighthouse customers 15 Product-Market Fit. Making sure the dogs will eat your dog food 16 Go-to-Market: How to make your business viable and grow 17 A formal business plan in ten steps 18 Burn rate and runway—or where is the edge of that cliff? 19 Achieving cash-flow positive: A startup’s Holy Grail 20 Your startup’s valuation: Up, up, up (hopefully) PART 4 21 Hire slowly—and correctly 22 Beyond foosball: Crafting a positive culture that retains your team 23 Does a startup need both a CEO and COO? 24 Marketing: Too often a startup’s afterthought 25 The right character for sales leader—and when to hire them PART 5 26 Startup boards: The good, (and how to prevent) the bad, and the ugly 27 Board observers: Observe only please 28 Investor communications. They needn’t be cod liver oil 29 Heaven forbid if you must downsize 30 Heaven forbid if you must wind it up 31 Acquisition: Your financial dream come true Appendix

This book contributes to the ongoing discussion around entrepreneurship in Africa and how it can be made more sustainable.It is also a significant new contribution to studying informality in relation to business and entrepreneurship. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of African Business.

This book illuminates entrepreneurship in the African setting, focusing on the prospects, challenges, and the post-Covid-19 pandemic future.

This book asserts the emergence of the fourth era of entrepreneurship, based on a brain-driven approach to the study, instruction, and practice of entrepreneurship.

This book investigates the relationship between the firm and the territory, emphasizing the micro-organizational dimension and the interactions between actors at territorial level.

This comprehensive volume explores the phenomenon of refugee entrepreneurship and advances the discussions and debates in the domain. A useful reference for stakeholders, refugee agencies and policymakers interested in supporting refugees' entrepreneurial behaviours through tailored programs and policy strategies.

Using the experience of patients, users, healthcare professionals and other stakeholders to innovate and rethink healthcare organizations and systems is gaining ground. Deploying these innovative methods and practices, however, requires an understanding and mastery of theoretical principles, as well as experimenting with them in the field. Experience in Healthcare Innovation alternates between theoretical presentations and case studies/examples in order to present the key notions of innovation in healthcare and the experiences of the people at the heart of healthcare ecosystems. It brings together diverse and complementary perspectives, shedding new light on the issue of healthcare experience through the prism of innovation. It includes a wealth of resources, ideas and results for all of those in healthcare wishing to implement innovative approaches that place the human experience at the heart of healthcare ecosystems.

Faced with global economic, social and environmental challenges requiring us to go beyond individual actions, the development of collective dynamics is the ideal response. From this perspective, territories, which have long been neglected, are now asserting themselves as breeding grounds for innovative and relevant forms of organized action in response to shared experiences. Bringing together more than twenty researchers in strategic management, human resources management and marketing, Collective Dynamics and Territories offers, through nine territorial issues (innovating and regenerating territories, building environmental action, attracting and retaining talent, etc.), insights into the conditions and modalities for developing collective dynamics within territories. The success of local collective dynamics depends on support for the actors involved, from situation analysis to problem definition, including idea generation, selection, implementation and evaluation. This book offers a comprehensive, systemic and operational vision for analyzing and acting on collective territorial dynamics.

Unleash the potential of partnerships with Partnering Success: The Force Multiplier to Achieve Exponential Growth.Let this book guide you to a future where collaboration is not just a strategy but a culture that drives innovation, engagement, and lasting success.

This book provides information on all the possible entrepreneurial avenues that would cater to the needs of educated but unemployed entomologists. It directs the reader towards the sources of income generation in entomology and discusses multidirectional pathways for them.

This book identifies and analyzes various determinants that shape entrepreneurship, shedding light on new conditions that inspire and affect running a business in a new dynamically changing economic reality.

Entrepreneurial Wellbeing: Perspectives in SMEs based on Gender and Immigrant Entrepreneurs will provide views on wellbeing for entrepreneurs, students, employees and research audiences and will help them to further understand this multifaceted topic.

The Book of Five Rings has inspired entrepreneurs for centuries and this guide explores all of the lessons aspiring business people can extract from this influential work.

Pets are part of today's family unit and their owners want to give them the best. In this new edition of Start Your Own Pet Business, readers navigate the market for pet-sitting and grooming services, pet food and toys, and more as learn the fundamentals for starting a successful business in the multibillion-dollar pet industry.

In the newest edition of the Entrepreneur Voices series, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and experts from both sides of the board roam present their best pitch-crafting, deal-closing strategies to help readers plan, pitch, and launch the business venture of their dreams.

If you're telling yourself this book isn't for you because you're locked into circumstances you can't change, because you didn't get your life off to a great start, because it's already too late, or because too many people are depending on you...I wrote this book for you.I wrote it for anyone who feels stuck-who wants to break out and try something different but who keeps not doing it. Maybe they think their circumstances are locking them in, maybe they're just scared, or maybe they think they could summon the courage and get into motion if they just knew where they wanted to go.I wrote it for people who want something more-people who already have quite a lot but still feel restless and people who've never had much but aren't willing to give up on the idea of having more. Finally, I wrote this book for women-not in an exclusionary, "No boys allowed" way, but because most of the books out there on the personal and career development shelves seem to assume a male reader. They make recommendations that any mother knows are out of reach...If you need to get kids to the school bus with their breakfasts eaten, backpacks packed, and at least most of their clothes on, matched, and right-side out, devoting the first three hours of your day to a morning routine of meditation, exercise, deep work, juicing, and day-planning might be fantastic. But so would a million dollars and a magic wand.

40 per cent of self-made millionaires are dyslexic. Dyslexia does not equal stupidity. For many, it's a superpower.  The Dyslexic Edge challenges the narrative that views dyslexia as a deficit or impediment to success, presenting compelling research to demonstrate quite the opposite.  Dyslexic thinking is limitless. And, crucially, it can be implemented by anyone.

How Entrepreneurs are Driving Sustainable Development explores the variety of entrepreneurs across business and their contributions to achieving sustainable development.

In this powerful memoir, George Tinsley Sr. shares his remarkable journey from a challenging childhood in Louisville's Smoketown neighborhood to becoming a successful businessman, entrepreneur, and community leader. For anyone seeking inspiration to overcome challenges and achieve their dreams, this book is a must-read.

This research book assesses the effect that COVID-19 has had on government funding priority, policy interventions and resultant implications on the entrepreneurship environment, economic growth and employment with a focus on BRICS.

Sujin Lee is one of Asia's most successful entrepreneurs of recent times. Starting with two desks and capital of only $50,000, Lee founded Yanolja, the South Korean super-app that provides hotel and travel bookings, and which today has revenues of $350 million. Before this, Lee was an orphaned child who spent his early 20s working as a hotel janitor. This book contains insights, thoughts and the experiences of Sujin Lee. Often candid and honest, it offers a rare and vivid look into the mind of an entrepreneur and the start-up of a company and its spectacular growth. Like most entrepreneurs, Lee experienced crises along the way, that forced him to start from scratch again. But he was able to continue going forwards, turning crisis into opportunity, and today Yanolja has evolved into a global, one-stop travel tech company, with further plans to expand into the cloud-based business

This book tells the stories of a selection of successful small business enterprises. It is not an account of financial success or brand share, it is a collection of narratives about the journeys made by inspiring, determined, innovative individuals who have applied their passion and skills to the creation of successful small businesses. The case studies tell compelling stories of personal achievement and business success, and encourage the reader to find out more about the small business owners and their products. The stories are about small, strong brands who are socially viable, well established and contribute to society and the local community. Across all the case studies, there is a recurring theme of not just making a profit; but a passion and motivation to suceed.

Technology and entrepreneurship converge in the digital era, presenting many possibilities and hurdles. One of the most pressing issues facing entrepreneurs is the ability to harness the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to drive innovation and create sustainable businesses. While AI holds immense potential for transforming entrepreneurial ideas across various fields, many individuals and organizations need help understanding its practical applications and implications. Generating Entrepreneurial Ideas With AI offers a comprehensive solution to this challenge. By examining the intersection of AI and entrepreneurship from a multidisciplinary perspective, we provide readers with invaluable insights and strategies for leveraging AI to enhance their entrepreneurial endeavors. This book is designed for students, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and academics. It is a practical guide and roadmap for integrating AI into entrepreneurial practices. Through a series of in-depth analyses and case studies, we demonstrate how AI can effectively identify new business opportunities, optimize operations, and enhance the overall competitiveness of ventures.

'8 Building Block' or '8BB' is a book about opportunity and achieving success. '8BB' Second Edition provides motivation, guidance, management tools and a vision helping readers navigate from a business idea to create a new venture.