Turn Your Great Idea into a Thriving Business! “A guide that sets first-time entrepreneurs’ feet in the right direction.” Geoffrey Moore, author, Crossing the Chasm “There are many books on entrepreneurship, but this is one of the few that will convert individuals to entrepreneurs.” Desh Deshpande, founder, Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, MIT; chairman, A123 Systems; cochair, National Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship About the Book: Are you among the many Americans who dream of starting a business but think you don’t know how? Help has arrived . . . For generations, Dartmouth College and the Tuck School of Business have influenced and driven global entrepreneurship. Dartmouth firsts include the world petroleum industry, technological breakthroughs like artificial intelligence and BASIC computer language, as well as popular products, such as the Nerf football and the game Crainium. Today a key resource for the Dartmouth Community is the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network (DEN), which helps anyone from undergraduates to faculty to alumni get their ideas off the ground and into the marketplace. In From Idea to Success, entrepreneur, professor, and DEN founder Gregg Fairbrothers takes you step by proven step through the DEN approach, showing you how to apply the same principles to make your vision a reality. If you have an idea—any idea—from major technology innovations, to consumer products or services, to social enterprises, From Idea to Success shows you how to bring it to fruition. This A to Z guide based on the startup experiences of literally hundreds of entrepreneurs makes the process simple as possible by breaking it down into three distinct parts: Step 1: Focusing and Refining Your Idea Define your goals, pinpoint your market, protect your idea, manage the risks in your undertaking Step 2: Business Planning Best Practices Create a business plan, build your team, learn about the competition, raise finances, get the important legal issues right the first time Step 3: Managing Your Company Build your negotiating, selling, and decision-making skills; manage your finances; correct your course; manage the transition to a healthy, growing business Building a vibrant company based on your own creativity and hard work is one of the most fulfilling human enterprises there is. With this book and your own experience you can think and act like a successful entrepreneur from the very start.

Turn Your Great Idea into a Thriving Business! “A guide that sets first-time entrepreneurs’ feet in the right direction.” Geoffrey Moore, author, Crossing the Chasm “There are many books on entrepreneurship, but this is one of the few that will convert individuals to entrepreneurs.” Desh Deshpande, founder, Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, MIT; chairman, A123 Systems; cochair, National Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship About the Book: Are you among the many Americans who dream of starting a business but think you don’t know how? Help has arrived . . . For generations, Dartmouth College and the Tuck School of Business have influenced and driven global entrepreneurship. Dartmouth firsts include the world petroleum industry, technological breakthroughs like artificial intelligence and BASIC computer language, as well as popular products, such as the Nerf football and the game Crainium. Today a key resource for the Dartmouth Community is the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network (DEN), which helps anyone from undergraduates to faculty to alumni get their ideas off the ground and into the marketplace. In From Idea to Success, entrepreneur, professor, and DEN founder Gregg Fairbrothers takes you step by proven step through the DEN approach, showing you how to apply the same principles to make your vision a reality. If you have an idea—any idea—from major technology innovations, to consumer products or services, to social enterprises, From Idea to Success shows you how to bring it to fruition. This A to Z guide based on the startup experiences of literally hundreds of entrepreneurs makes the process simple as possible by breaking it down into three distinct parts: Step 1: Focusing and Refining Your Idea Define your goals, pinpoint your market, protect your idea, manage the risks in your undertaking Step 2: Business Planning Best Practices Create a business plan, build your team, learn about the competition, raise finances, get the important legal issues right the first time Step 3: Managing Your Company Build your negotiating, selling, and decision-making skills; manage your finances; correct your course; manage the transition to a healthy, growing business Building a vibrant company based on your own creativity and hard work is one of the most fulfilling human enterprises there is. With this book and your own experience you can think and act like a successful entrepreneur from the very start.

This book is written primarily for people who are creating the future high-tech world by designing, building, and marketing innovative products. More specifically, it is for all engineers, engineering managers, entrepreneurs and intapreneurs. The book provides insight into the problems entrepreneurs face and gives a model for successful startup companies in a formal checklist.

This comprehensive step-by-step guide takes you through the critical business planning issues of company strategy: What's your Identity? Marketing issues: Who are the buyers? Product/Service issues: What are you selling? Sales and promotion issues: How do you sell? and financial issues: How are you doing?

Beat the competition with INTERNAL INNOVATION If 3M’s corporate leadership hadn’t given researcher Art Fry a creative outlet, the world would never have seen the Post-it Note . . . Corporate entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, mavericks. No matter what name they go by, these innovators are the pioneering forces within an organization who spark new enterprises, products, services, and processes to combat increased global competition. Corporate Entrepreneurship shows you how to develop and grow your organization by designing the culture, structure, strategies, and policies that encourage and support internal entrepreneurial ventures. Bestselling author and world-renowned entrepreneur Robert Hisrich teams up with global management expert Claudine Kearney to provide action plans, techniques, and insights for establishing an organizational culture that allows intrapreneurs to develop the entrepreneurial ventures that will secure value and generate new growth in your company. Every day, globalization and technological advancements continue to put more of your competitors within reach of your customers. In order for your company to stay attractive and thrive, you need the proven tools and tactics in this book to: Identify, evaluate, and fund venture opportunities Recognize bright corporate entrepreneurs and create their compensation plans Create business plans that avoid failure, optimize success, and develop and sustain corporate venturing Manage the internal politics of venturing Effectively implement corporate venturing into your organization Hisrich uses illustrative examples from his experience consulting for such global companies as 3M, Alcoa, Westinghouse, Citi, and many others. Through informative, well-researched case studies, he demonstrates how his concepts help companies prosper over the long run, gain market share, and stay on the cutting edge of their potential. If your employees aren’t innovating, your company is losing its competitive edge. Use Corporate Entrepreneurship to give your mavericks what they need to keep your company on top—all over the world.

Every business faces the existential threat of competitors producing cheaper copies. Even patent filings, market dominance and financial resources can't shield them from copycats. So what can we do -- and, what can we learn from companies that have endured and even prospered for centuries despite copycat competition? In a book of narrative history and practical strategy, IMD professor of management and innovation Howard Yu shows that succeeding in today's marketplace is no longer just a matter of mastering copycat tactics, companies also need to leap across knowledge disciplines, and to reimagine how a product is made or a service is delivered. This proven tactic can protect a company from being overtaken by new (and often foreign) copycat competitors. Using riveting case studies of successful leaps and tragic falls, Yu illustrates five principles to success that span a wide range of industries, countries, and eras. Learn about how P&G in the 19th century made the leap from handcrafted soaps and candles to mass production of its signature brand Ivory, leaped into the new fields of consumer psychology and advertising, then leaped again, at the risk of cannibalizing its core product, into synthetic detergents and won with Tide in 1946. Learn about how Novartis and other pharma pioneers stayed ahead by making leaps from chemistry to microbiology to genomics in drug discovery; and how forward-thinking companies, including China's largest social media app -- WeChat, Tokyo-based Internet service provider Recruit Holdings, and Illinois-headquartered John Deere are leaping ahead by leveraging the emergence of ubiquitous connectivity, the inexorable rise of intelligent machines, and the rising importance of managerial creativity. Outlasting competition is difficult; doing so over decades or a century is nearly impossible -- unless one leaps. Ultimately, Leap is a manifesto for how pioneering companies can endure and prosper in a world of constant change and inevitable copycats.

From the bestselling author of the National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin comes a lesson in how to be a writer—and so much more than that. Intriguing and inspirational, this book is a call to look outward rather than inward. McCann asks his readers to constantly push the boundaries of experience, to see empathy and wonder in the stories we craft and hear. A paean to the power of language, both by argument and by example, Letters to a Young Writer is fierce and honest in its testament to the bruises delivered by writing as both a profession and a calling. It charges aspiring writers to learn the rules and even break them. These fifty-two essays are ultimately a profound challenge to a new generation to bring truth and light to a dark world through their art.