From the founders of the trailblazing software company 37signals, here is a different kind of business book - one that explores a new reality. Today, anyone can be in business. Tools that used to be out of reach are now easily accessible. Technology that cost thousands is now just a few pounds or even free. Stuff that was impossible just a few years ago is now simple. That means anyone can start a business. And you can do it without working miserable 80-hour weeks or depleting your life savings. You can start it on the side while your day job provides all the cash flow you need. Forget about business plans, meetings, office space - you don't need them. With its straightforward language and easy-is-better approach, Rework is the perfect playbook for anyone who's ever dreamed of doing it on their own. Hardcore entrepreneurs, small-business owners, people stuck in day jobs who want to get out, and artists who don't want to starve anymore will all find valuable inspiration and guidance in these pages. It's time to rework work.

This impressive book outlines the complexities peculiar to the field of social entrepreneurship. Such complexities manifest at different moments in the development of a social entrepreneurial venture. It ties together many of the pressing issues and questions often encountered by social entrepreneurs and innovators as they identify, create, develop and sustain their own solutions throughout the life-cycle of their ventures. The contributors expertly focus on the individual, organizational and institutional levels of social entrepreneurship. They address the role of personal values and leadership in the conduct of social entrepreneurial initiatives while stressing the importance of stakeholders in relation to human resource management, innovation or opportunity discovery. Finally, they analyze the role of institutions in legitimating social entrepreneurs' actions. Social entrepreneurship, as a multi-disciplinary field, presents a unique opportunity and environment for researchers to contribute to academic-focused knowledge on both theoretical frameworks and practical skills on a holistic level. This volume offers a comprehensive foundation for this endeavor.

This authoritative collection presents the most important and influential contributions to the study of entrepreneurial opportunity. The first section investigates the nature of entrepreneurial opportunity. The second presents the best work of the last ten years on the dynamics and nature of opportunity emergence. The careful selection of articles, alongside an original introduction by the editors, concludes by highlighting the varying contexts in which entrepreneurial opportunity can occur and strategies for researching it.

This much-needed book draws together Howard Aldrich's key contribution to entrepreneurship research over recent decades. In an original introduction, the author first lays out the evolutionary approach, examining the assumptions and principles of `selection logic' that drive evolutionary explanations. The book then expands on evolutionary theory as applied to entrepreneurship, emphasizing the role of historical and comparative analysis before focusing on the importance of social networks, particularly as they affect the genesis of entrepreneurial teams. Professor Aldrich takes a strategic approach to the creation of new organizational populations and communities, using examples from the commercialization of the Internet and the collapse of the Internet bubble. The book then presents his contributions to gender and family, offering a `family embeddedness' perspective before focusing on the implications of entrepreneurship for stratification and inequality in modern societies, combining an evolutionary with a life course perspective. Finally, he concludes the book with another original essay, reflecting on future directions for entrepreneurship research. This mix of groundbreaking papers that introduced new concepts into the entrepreneurship literature will prove invaluable to scholars - graduate students and faculty members - interested in research on entrepreneurship. Professors of entrepreneurship and strategy as well as academics teaching organizational sociology courses will also find plenty of invaluable information in this important resource.

This insightful book presents leading-edge European research on entrepreneurial processes in a changing global world. The contributors take a closer look at what constitutes entrepreneurial processes; how entrepreneurs develop their businesses and access critical resources in times of crisis; and which roles knowledge and innovation play in continuous venture development. The chapters included in this volume give a flavour of the themes and approaches featuring in contemporary entrepreneurship and small business research in Europe. Entrepreneurial Processes in a Changing Economy will prove invaluable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of entrepreneurship and small business. Entrepreneurship and small business researchers as well as policy makers will also find plenty of relevant information in this important resource.

The very foundation of the economy is changing. Across the United States, primary and secondary sector industries are no longer as viable as they once were - because the particular businesses are no longer profitable, because the underlying resources are no longer as plentiful or desirable, or because human activity is not essential to various aspects of an industry's operations. As economies evolve from traditional industrial resources, such as mining and manufacturing, to `new' resources, such as information and content, innovation and entrepreneurship are key. Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Evolving Economies examines the role of law in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in communities whose economies are in transition. It contains a collection of works from different perspectives and tackles tough questions regarding policy and practice, including how support for entrepreneurship can be translated into policy. Additionally, this collection addresses more concrete questions of practical efficacy, including measures of how successful or unsuccessful legal efforts to incentivize entrepreneurship may be, through intellectual property law and otherwise, and what might define success to begin with. Expertly researched and widely accessible, Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Evolving Economies will appeal especially to students and scholars of innovation, law, and entrepreneurship.

Do entrepreneurs create ventures or do venture experiences create entrepreneurs? The authors of Entrepreneurship as Experience propose that the answer is `both'. This important volume examines how individuals experience the creation of a venture as it happens and how that experience determines the types of entrepreneur and venture that ultimately emerge. In essence, entrepreneurship is an experience consisting of large numbers of key events such as a first sale, hiring a first employee, losing a big account - events that are processed and made sense of by the entrepreneur. They produce cognitive, emotional and physiological responses, which impact decision-making and behavior. The result is an experience that is purposive, diverse, uncertain, ambiguous and transformative - and unique to each individual. Here, the authors argue that as experience unfolds both entrepreneur and venture are being constructed and emerge in unique forms. This experiential view introduces an entirely new lens through which entrepreneurship can be examined. Entrepreneurship as Experience comprises chapters dedicated to sociological, anthropological and psychological research related to human experiencing; the volume presents a new frame for understanding the role of emotions and feelings in venture creation and lays out a conceptual framework for understanding how real-time experiencing informs the entrepreneurial process. New insights are provided regarding how the entrepreneurial mindset and an entrepreneurial identity are formed, and why entrepreneurs take on certain traits and develop certain competencies. Further, the authors put forth new approaches to conducting research on the entrepreneurial experience. Students - advanced as well as undergraduate - and scholars of entrepreneurship, innovation, strategy and management will find themselves turning often to the ideas and research presented here.

Bringing technologies to the market, thereby creating profits, high-qualified jobs and industrial upgrading is one of the means by which China can fuel its brand new growth model based on innovation and sustainability. Much is known about the mechanisms of technological entrepreneurship. But how does this happen in China? Who is doing what? Is there a `Chinese way' to do technological entrepreneurship? This thought-provoking book provides readers with a closer look at these issues and clarifies them through a number of case studies discussed from the perspectives of both Chinese and international contributors. Technological Entrepreneurship in China offers a comprehensive and practical assessment of technological entrepreneurship in China. Exclusively based on cases, the book tackles the issues of technological entrepreneurship in China from a systemic view. In so doing the book provides an account of the main factors at work behind Chinese technological entrepreneurship and their interplay, the past and present transitions facing Chinese technology-based enterprises, and how those transitions were and are being dealt with. It offers a glimpse in a huge natural experiment that will prove insightful for both scholars and policymakers.

This book historicizes entrepreneurship research, its primary thesis being `history matters'. Expert contributors discuss the field's long history and explore whether it has developed a mature and comprehensive knowledge base. The intellectual roots of several important theories are then examined in depth because, as entrepreneurship research has become more theory driven, and scholars have borrowed theories from many different fields, it becomes increasingly important to understand their origin. Finally, the book demonstrates how economic history research (for example, the historical and institutional context of entrepreneurial behaviour) can contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurship. Providing a broad overview of myriad theories and both their development and utilization in extant entrepreneurship research, this book will prove a fascinating and illuminating read for students, researchers and academics in the field of entrepreneurship.

This informative Handbook examines successful women small business owners in both developed and emergent countries around the globe and, in particular, focuses on women entrepreneur success stories. The contributors expertly identify the issues that underpin the success of women small business owners around the globe. Each chapter provides an up-to-date, country-specific review of women's position in employment and small business ownership and addresses the structural and contextual barriers. They also highlight two cases studies about successful women business owners, and consider strategies relating to the development of women's business ownership by exploring practical initiatives that have worldwide transferability. International Research Handbook on Successful Women Entrepreneurs will prove essential reading for students and academics in the fields of entrepreneurship, international business and gender studies. It will also be of invaluable interest to policy-makers, government officials, and those in traditional markets who wish to understand the nature of small business ownership for women in developing and emerging countries.

The early years of the 21st Century could well be called the `decade(s) of the entrepreneur'. Entrepreneurship is an often-featured topic in magazine and newspaper articles, popular television shows and major films. Universities have added courses, departments, and even schools of entrepreneurship to their catalogs, and governments at all levels are competing to develop programs to encourage entrepreneurship. A key reason behind this growing interest is the widely held belief - supported by economic data - that entrepreneurship is a powerful engine of economic growth. By presenting accurate knowledge about entrepreneurship itself, this book serves to convert the rising tide of interest in entrepreneurship into advice and guidance that can actually assist entrepreneurs in achieving their goals. In order to do so, this book presents evidence-based information concerning the factors that encourage entrepreneurship's emergence, including the conditions that shape its outcomes and how it unfolds as a process. This text draws on two key sources of knowledge - input from entrepreneurs and the findings of systematic empirical research. As the sub-title suggests, however, emphasis is placed on the latter whenever possible because the information individual entrepreneurs possess cannot readily serve as the basis for general principles or guidelines since it is unique to each entrepreneur. By combining evidence-based knowledge with the hard-earned wisdom of experienced entrepreneurs, this volume offers a balanced and inclusive guide useful to both current and aspiring entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is indeed a driving force of economic growth. But beyond that, it is also a key mechanism through which human creativity, ingenuity, skill, and energy are converted into tangible outcomes that can, and often do, change the world in ways that enhance and enrich human welfare. This volume will be of particular interest to students of entrepreneurship in a broad array of fields ranging from business and management to engineering and governance. Suitable for undergraduate courses and graduate programs alike, this book is frontier blazing in its own right and will help those who read it be so as well.

The early years of the 21st Century could well be called the `decade(s) of the entrepreneur'. Entrepreneurship is an often-featured topic in magazine and newspaper articles, popular television shows and major films. Universities have added courses, departments, and even schools of entrepreneurship to their catalogs, and governments at all levels are competing to develop programs to encourage entrepreneurship. A key reason behind this growing interest is the widely held belief - supported by economic data - that entrepreneurship is a powerful engine of economic growth. By presenting accurate knowledge about entrepreneurship itself, this book serves to convert the rising tide of interest in entrepreneurship into advice and guidance that can actually assist entrepreneurs in achieving their goals. In order to do so, this book presents evidence-based information concerning the factors that encourage entrepreneurship's emergence, including the conditions that shape its outcomes and how it unfolds as a process. This text draws on two key sources of knowledge - input from entrepreneurs and the findings of systematic empirical research. As the sub-title suggests, however, emphasis is placed on the latter whenever possible because the information individual entrepreneurs possess cannot readily serve as the basis for general principles or guidelines since it is unique to each entrepreneur. By combining evidence-based knowledge with the hard-earned wisdom of experienced entrepreneurs, this volume offers a balanced and inclusive guide useful to both current and aspiring entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is indeed a driving force of economic growth. But beyond that, it is also a key mechanism through which human creativity, ingenuity, skill, and energy are converted into tangible outcomes that can, and often do, change the world in ways that enhance and enrich human welfare. This volume will be of particular interest to students of entrepreneurship in a broad array of fields ranging from business and management to engineering and governance. Suitable for undergraduate courses and graduate programs alike, this book is frontier blazing in its own right and will help those who read it be so as well.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER What if you could get in front of millions of media prospects with the avid endorsement of famous influencers--without spending a dime? It's happening right in front of you every day. Guest experts on TV, radio, podcasts, blogs, and live streaming are getting local and national exposure for their business and brand that they could never have afforded to reach with ads. For a decade, Areva Martin has used the media to build a huge platform that expanded the influence and power of her brand exponentially. Media appearances on Dr. Phil, Anderson Cooper 360, The Doctors, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and more have virtually eliminated the need of a marketing budget for her thriving law firm and non-profit organization, while securing her place as one of America's most sought after thought leaders. In Make It Rain! Areva breaks the silence to reveal what insiders know about the power of media appearances to revolutionize a business and brand and get your core message out to the people who need it most. You'll learn how to: Match your brand to the right audience and media venues Craft pitches producers can't resist Jump on breaking news shows Pivot and speak in soundbites like the pros Amplify every interview with social media Turn appearances into platform and become a rainmaker Never before have there been more ways to build a presence that matters. Whether you are the executive of a corporation, the author of an upcoming book, the owner of a rapidly growing small business, or the public face of a local nonprofit or association, if you have a business to build or people you want to help, nothing beats using the media to create the visibility, influence, and power you need. Are you ready to Make It Rain!?

The groundbreaking game rules contained in this book have inspired thousands of business owners to embark on the journey towards Extreme Business Success.

As small and medium business owners, we often make achieving outrageous success far harder than it should be. If you know the rules of the business game, it's so much easier to achieve success in every aspect of your business.

In this book you will discover:
•  the 12 Laws of Extreme Business Success, and how by understanding and applying them you can turn your "mind" into "millions"
• that the bigger your "promise", the bigger your business can become
• that to achieve success, you must move your passion from practicing your craft to creating an enterprise
• why the right timing and rhythm creates momentum for your business, and how you can use this momentum to achieve Extreme Business Success
• that when you take yourself and your business too seriously, you lose the pleasure of the journey
• the importance of playing to win and leading your field

Although there is an expanding body of literature on the characteristics, aspirations, motivations, challenges and barriers of mainstream entrepreneurs, relatively little is known about whether these findings can be applied to the entrepreneurial activities of minority groups. This book addresses this short-fall and presents an international review of the characteristics, motivations and obstacles of eight minority groups: younger; older; women; ethnic; immigrant; lesbian, gay and bisexual; disabled; and indigenous entrepreneurs. The expert contributors discover enormous variability between these minority groups, such as in the motivators that either `pushed' or `pulled' individuals into an entrepreneurial venture, as well as diverse attitudes toward `success': some groups wanted to achieve financial security - others wanted to enhance their sense of self-worth, or to change existing social and economic circumstances. However, some striking similarities were noted: initial disadvantage often created a powerful impetus to starting up a business venture, and accessing finance was extremely difficult for many. Including comparative cross cultural data and case studies on the various minority groups reviewed, both post graduate students and undergraduate students studying entrepreneurship will find this book an invaluable resource. In addition, it will also be of interest to policy makers, governments and all those who wish to comprehend the nature of small business ownership for a wide range of minority business owners.

Global Women's Entrepreneurship Research responds to recent calls from academic researchers and policy analysts alike to pay greater attention to the diversity and heterogeneity among women entrepreneurs. Drawing together studies by 26 researchers affiliated with the DIANA International Research Network, this collection contributes to a richer and more robust understanding of the field. Part I: `Diverse Settings' introduces research set in a range of contexts, from those rarely examined to those representing more familiar terrains. Part II: `Diverse Questions' explores new questions and reframes old questions in fresh, innovative ways. Part III: `Diverse Approaches' features studies with distinct methodological approaches that reflect and extend the rigour and creativity of research in this field. Together, the research assembled in this volume significantly advances knowledge about women's entrepreneurship around the world. While the book's primary audience is academic researchers and graduate students working in the areas of women's entrepreneurship, as well as entrepreneurship and family business more generally, it will also be of interest to scholars working in related research areas in the sociology of gender, work and organizations. Policy-makers in government and non-government agencies as well as profit and not-for-profit organizations that provide services to, or conduct research on, women entrepreneurs will also benefit greatly from the insights provided in this unique volume.

This impressive Handbook provides a dynamic perspective on the development of successful born global firms, including evolutionary phases and pathways of growth, emergence of entire born global industries, role of founders' linkages, experience, culture and training, as well as collaboration with large MNEs. The expert contributors and the editors explore the origin and evolution of born globals and the changing history of this sector. They outline the training involved in developing international intellectual entrepreneurs and study the effects of different cultures on the origin and growth of born globals. The Handbook focuses on the different types of born globals that emerge from the general set of SMEs - ranging from the pure born globals to the born again globals, the born regionals, and their sub group of born again regionals. It also innovatively differentiates these from internationalizing SMEs and international new ventures. Providing a dynamic perspective on the development of successful born global firms, this book will prove essential reading for researchers and students of international business. Founders of born global firms will also learn about novel management practices, whilst educational institutions and governments will find invaluable insights on how to foster the emergence of successful born globals.

The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index both captures the context features of entrepreneurship and fills a gap in the measurement of development. Building on recent advances in entrepreneurship and economic development, the authors have created an index that offers a measure of the quality of the business formation process in 79 of the most important countries in the world. Zoltan J. Acs and Laszlo Szerb expertly capture the contextual feature of entrepreneurship by focusing on entrepreneurial attitudes, entrepreneurial actions and entrepreneurial aspirations. The data and their contribution to the business formation process are supported by three decades of research into entrepreneurship across a host of countries. The unique index construction of individual and institutional measures integrates 31 variables from various data sources into 14 pillars, three sub-indexes and a `super index'. The relationship between entrepreneurship and economic development appears to be more or less mildly S-shaped. The findings suggest moving away from simple measures of entrepreneurship across countries illustrating a U-shaped or L-shaped relationship to more complex measures, which are positively related to development. The model has important implications for development policy. This unique book will be invaluable for researchers, policymakers and entrepreneurs themselves keen to expand their understanding of entrepreneurship and development.

The continuing success of the Asian Miracle relies on an entrepreneurial revolution that has increased the productivity and flexibility of economies across the region. Yet this revolution has largely been necessity-driven, traditional and vulnerable to erosion as the region becomes increasingly prosperous and well educated. How to educate the next wave of entrepreneurs is a pressing Asian question that resonates around the world and is the subject of this volume. Hugh Thomas and Donna Kelley draw on 24 scholars from 15 institutions to report on regional entrepreneurship education. They identify problems encountered by educators and describe solutions that stimulate students to create value. The approaches are hands-on, project-based and multidisciplinary, geared to develop educator-to-business entrepreneurial ecosystems. The entrepreneurial programs described in this book involve experiencing foreign cultures, working with major corporations, consulting to small and medium sized enterprises, travelling to distant lands, addressing environmental and social problems, and reaching out to the disadvantaged. Social entrepreneurship is combined with for-profit entrepreneurship in programs that extend the concept of value creation. This book eloquently and expertly describes how entrepreneurship education - whether in Vietnam, Malaysia, Korea, Japan, China or elsewhere on the globe - can combine with community to help youth create a better world. Students and scholars the world over, along with administrators, researchers, and all those with an interest in education and entrepreneurship, will find much of interest in this enlightening volume.

Second tier high-tech regions are taking a different path than their well-known counterparts such as Silicon Valley or Route 128 around Boston. They may lack many prerequisites of growth such as a world-class research university or high levels of venture capital funding. Often, however, they can successfully leverage anchor firms and entrepreneurial spinoffs. This book explores the evolution of these regions in the United States. The author critically examines how they evolved as knowledge-based economies, how they leveraged entrepreneurship and innovation, and ultimately how they employed public policy to support economic growth. Filling a gap in the literature, the book speaks to researchers and policymakers across the fields of entrepreneurship, economic geography and economic development planning. Entrepreneurship researchers will find this book interesting because it focuses on the role of new venture creation in regional economic development.

This thorough volume describes and analyzes entrepreneurial family businesses in Latin American countries. The research presented here has been conducted within the Global STEP (Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices) Project. Dealing with some of the most important opportunities and challenges that Latin American family businesses face, particular attention is given to the uncertainty that characterizes most business environments in Latin American countries. The authors argue that while uncertainty is always a central characteristic of entrepreneurial processes and activities, uncertainty is particularly pronounced for Latin American family businesses striving to grow. In addition to a comprehensive introductory chapter that outlines the book's core concepts, including transgenerational entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial orientation, resources, capabilities and uncertainty, the book describes the main characteristics of entrepreneurship and family businesses in Latin America. It also brings together a unique set of empirical case-based research papers that investigate transgenerational entrepreneurship in different Latin American family business contexts. The unique contributions found here include studies on: * Hostile environments and entrepreneurial orientation * The influence of culture on governance and innovativeness * Governance structures and entrepreneurial performance * Family conflict as a source of entrepreneurial opportunities * Entrepreneurship in transgenerational processes by means of social capital * Knowledge integration and entrepreneurial behavior * The role of tacit knowledge in the identification of entrepreneurial opportunities * Financial issues in entrepreneurial family businesses * Communication during the entrance of new generations into the family business. Students and scholars of entrepreneurship the world over will find much of note in this carefully researched work. So too will anyone interested in sustaining a successful transgenerational family business.

This book takes an original approach to business models and entrepreneurship, resulting from a durable involvement with entrepreneurs and from experiments combining theory and practice. The authors present the generation, remuneration, and sharing business model, which relates to the value generation, its remuneration and the sharing of this remuneration. They also outline the role and the central place of the business model within the entrepreneurial process; the theoretical bases - conventions theory, resource based view and stakeholder theory - and the construction of the GRS model; the experiments conducted within teaching, practical, and theoretical frameworks; and the contribution of the business model to a theory of entrepreneurship theory. The book explains why the business model can be useful for entrepreneurs and why it is relevant to set it in place during the entrepreneurial process. Students and researchers who are interested in entrepreneurship will find this an important resource for developing a new business. Management coaches, often interested in the most recent developments of management research, will have no difficulty moving between the theory and practice set out in this book. Finally, curious entrepreneurs will read this study not to seek immediate solutions to a problem but to reflect on the topics addressed here that show that the business model is not just a fashion but is highly useful.