How do I know if my idea will work? How do I decide on the business model? How do I find my audience? Your digital business start-up journey begins here. From the bestselling author of The Small Business Start-up Workbook, Cheryl Rickman brings you a thoroughly practical guide to starting up a digital business, covering the full journey from idea to exit, with easy-to-implement strategies to make your online venture an ongoing success. With a combination of tips, exercises, checklists, anecdotes, case studies and lessons learned by business leaders, this workbook will guide you through each step of digital business. Learn how to: • Assess whether your business idea will work online/digitally • Choose the right business model for your proposition and avoid wasting time • Assess demand, viability and uncover untapped needs and gaps in the market • Build a usable, engaging website and mobile app • Create a buzz using social networking • Drive high quality traffic to your site and convert visitors into paying customers • Use search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM) tools effectively • Raise finance and protect your business • Build and maintain a strong brand • Recruit and retain a strong team • Sell the business or find a suitable successor. Reviews for the book: “If you want advice on starting your own internet business, don’t ask me, read this book instead. It is more up-to-date and costs far less than a good lunch.” Nick Jenkins, Founder of Moonpig.com “This book excels in providing practical guidance on how to create a successful digital business which exceeds customer expectations and keeps customers happy each step of the way.” Scott Weavers-Wright, CEO of Kiddicare.com, and MD of Morrison.com (non-food) “If you read just one book on digital business, make it this one... It is inspirational, informative and interactive in equal measure. Highly recommended!” Rowan Gormley, Founder and CEO of NakedWines.com “Interspersed with inspiring and useful stories from successful entrepreneurs, this book can help aspiring business owners through a step-by-step process of refining their start-up ideas and building a solid business.” Elizabeth Varley, Founder and CEO of TechHub

How do I know if my idea will work? How do I decide on the business model? How do I find my audience? Your digital business start-up journey begins here. From the bestselling author of The Small Business Start-up Workbook, Cheryl Rickman brings you a thoroughly practical guide to starting up a digital business, covering the full journey from idea to exit, with easy-to-implement strategies to make your online venture an ongoing success. With a combination of tips, exercises, checklists, anecdotes, case studies and lessons learned by business leaders, this workbook will guide you through each step of digital business. Learn how to: • Assess whether your business idea will work online/digitally • Choose the right business model for your proposition and avoid wasting time • Assess demand, viability and uncover untapped needs and gaps in the market • Build a usable, engaging website and mobile app • Create a buzz using social networking • Drive high quality traffic to your site and convert visitors into paying customers • Use search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing (SEM) tools effectively • Raise finance and protect your business • Build and maintain a strong brand • Recruit and retain a strong team • Sell the business or find a suitable successor. Reviews for the book: “If you want advice on starting your own internet business, don’t ask me, read this book instead. It is more up-to-date and costs far less than a good lunch.” Nick Jenkins, Founder of Moonpig.com “This book excels in providing practical guidance on how to create a successful digital business which exceeds customer expectations and keeps customers happy each step of the way.” Scott Weavers-Wright, CEO of Kiddicare.com, and MD of Morrison.com (non-food) “If you read just one book on digital business, make it this one... It is inspirational, informative and interactive in equal measure. Highly recommended!” Rowan Gormley, Founder and CEO of NakedWines.com “Interspersed with inspiring and useful stories from successful entrepreneurs, this book can help aspiring business owners through a step-by-step process of refining their start-up ideas and building a solid business.” Elizabeth Varley, Founder and CEO of TechHub

ONLINE BUSINESS STARTUP isn't just a how-to guide in online marketing or SEO... it contains everything an experienced entrepreneur wished he had known when he started in business. We are flooded with so much information in the digital world that it distracts us from the fundamentals of starting up and running a lean business. This book is ultimately an answer to the question "How can we quickly implement proven strategies in our business, and avoid all the noise?" ONLINE BUSINESS STARTUP will teach you: 1. Everything you need to start an online business without the wasted time, money and effort; 2. How to find a trustworthy, reliable digital agency and guarantee a return on your investment; 3. The 7 best tools for auditing and improving your website; 4. How to plan and implement a successful social media strategy.

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

24 Steps to Success! Disciplined Entrepreneurship will change the way you think about starting a company. Many believe that entrepreneurship cannot be taught, but great entrepreneurs aren’t born with something special – they simply make great products. This book will show you how to create a successful startup through developing an innovative product. It breaks down the necessary processes into an integrated, comprehensive, and proven 24-step framework that any industrious person can learn and apply. You will learn: Why the “F” word – focus – is crucial to a startup’s success Common obstacles that entrepreneurs face – and how to overcome them How to use innovation to stand out in the crowd – it’s not just about technology Whether you’re a first-time or repeat entrepreneur, Disciplined Entrepreneurship gives you the tools you need to improve your odds of making a product people want. Author Bill Aulet is the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship as well as a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. For more please visit http://disciplinedentrepreneurship.com/

Surf the waves of change. We are no longer an economy of products and services. The digital transformation demands that we focus our attention on experiences and outcomes. Business leaders and their organizations must shift to keeping promises—no matter how their customers interact with them. But organizations no longer control the conversation. In this era of social and mobile technology, customers, employees, suppliers, and partners are in direct communication with one another. Those personal networks and the brands they’re passionate about influence their decision making and their spending. The workforce has changed too. Employees expect to be able to determine when and how they will work, the technology they’ll use, and the values their company will espouse. Organizations can take part in this conversation only if they recognize how and where it’s happening. Resisting these changes will leave executives, managers, and their companies powerless. Organizations must pivot with and ahead of these social, organizational, and technological shifts or risk being left behind. Technology guru Ray Wang shows how organizations can surf the waves of change—how they can keep their promises. Current trends, when taken seriously, require a new way of thinking about business that includes five key areas: 1. Consumerization of technology and the new C-suite 2. Data’s influence in driving decisions 3. Digital marketing transformation 4. The future of work 5. Matrix commerce Digital disruption has changed how we do our work. But by mastering these trends you’ll delight your customers with every interaction.

Digital transformation is not about technology--it's about change. In the rapidly changing digital economy, you can't succeed by merely tweaking management practices that led to past success. And yet, while many leaders and managers recognize the threat from digital--and the potential opportunity--they lack a common language and compelling framework to help them assess it and guide them in responding. They don't know how to think about their digital business model. In this concise, practical book, MIT digital research leaders Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner provide a powerful yet straightforward framework that has been field-tested globally with dozens of senior management teams. Based on years of study at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), the authors find that digitization is moving companies' business models on two dimensions: from value chains to digital ecosystems, and from a fuzzy understanding of the needs of end customers to a sharper one. Looking at these dimensions in combination results in four distinct business models, each with different capabilities. The book then sets out six driving questions, in separate chapters, that help managers and executives clarify where they are currently in an increasingly digital business landscape and highlight what's needed to move toward a higher-value digital business model. Filled with straightforward self-assessments, motivating examples, and sharp financial analyses of where profits are made, this smart book will help you tackle the threats, leverage the opportunities, and create winning digital strategies.

Think #Digital First Second Edition is a workbook designed for creative entrepreneurs, business owners and sales and marketing managers that shares with them the importance of having the right mindset to focus on technology, sales and marketing.

This book responds to the growing demand for a scientific approach to the concept of startups, which are a manifestation of the digital revolution and an innovation-driven economy. With a focus on digital enterprises, the author presents empirical research carried out over 4 years in collaboration with the Startup Poland Foundation, and provides a developed universal definition of a startup. This book highlights the necessity of a clear definition, in order for startups to be treated as a permanent economic phenomenon, rather than a temporary whim. Addressing the crucial need for an effective startup management methodology and more education on this form of entrepreneurship, Digital Startups in Transition Economies offers guidance for those researching entrepreneurship and innovation, as well as entrepreneurs, public institutions, startup accelerators and technology transfer centres.