This book explores how entrepreneurial networks provide the basis for individuals and firms to compete based on knowledge asymmetries. This book states that this is crucial in the increasingly interdependent world where social capital influences potential market performance. This edited book focuses on future trends regarding entrepreneurial networks in terms of social, cultural and market connections thereby bridging the entrepreneurship, strategy and network literature. This book provides a practical way to capture market changes as networks evolve to a more digital format. The impact of innovation and strategy on these market developments will be discussed in each chapter as a way to understand performance.
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.
You don't need this book. The entrepreneurial spirit is fueled by action, and we can all do more with less in the connected era. If you commit to the adventure of a lifetime and are willing to endlessly persist, we can each achieve career nirvana while inspiring the world around us. While the title of this book is true, if you're a caffeinated change maker thirsty for what's next, this synthesized narrative will provide innovative energy to help you start that new business, improve an existing company, fire up a side hustle, or evolve your own entrepreneurial ecosystem. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ben McDougal is an experienced entrepreneur and energized entrepreneurial ecosystem builder. He is passionate about the art of connection, accelerating entrepreneurs, and evolving ideas into reality. Ben has been inspired by thousands of fellow founders nationwide and wrote this book to help you champion change on the timeline of now. Learn more at www.BenMcDougal.com.
Put your organization’s data to work with Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010—and build valuable business solutions. Led by a team of SharePoint experts, you’ll learn how to integrate data from several systems—such as sales, accounting, and inventory—and then search, display, combine, and modify the information using code and no-code SharePoint solutions. This hands-on guide is ideal for SharePoint project managers, business analysts, architects, and administrators. Create a central hub for your business data with SharePoint 2010 Access data from applications and databases using Business Connectivity Services Create external lists in SharePoint to display your business data Build dashboards to present charts and key performance indicators Use business information offline with Microsoft Office applications Create custom SharePoint applications to insert, modify, and delete business data Populate SharePoint user profiles with information from several sources Build Business Connectivity Service solutions in SharePoint Online
Comprehensive coverage on Business Connectivity Services within SharePoint 2010 As Microsoft’s new multipurpose portal technology, Business Connectivity Services (BCS) is a brand new way for SharePoint users to seamlessly access and integrate data from any application or databases within SharePoint 2010. With this in-depth guide, a team of SharePoint experts walks you through the features of the new BCS, including the ability for users to view and modify the data from SharePoint 2010 with BCS. You’ll explore how to use BCS, deploy solutions, create external content types and lists, create .NET host connectors, and more. Business Connectivity Services (BCS) allows you to seamlessly access and integrate data from any application or databases within SharePoint 2010 Demonstrates how to create BCS solutions with the SharePoint Designer in SharePoint 2010 and Office Provides a clear overview of the BCS API Addresses creating external content types and lists Explains how to develop search-based solutions with BCS Professional Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 provides you with thorough coverage on this new multipurpose portal technology.
In the world of business, who you know is usually more important than what you know. While most research highlights the personal characteristics and expertise important to business success, this book demonstrates that networking is the core of entrepreneurship. Both counterintuitive and powerful, this perspective reframes entrepreneurial action by placing networking at the center of the process. Traditionally, networks have been regarded as facilitators of business, but Tom Elfring, Kim Klyver, and Elco van Burg argue that networking is actually the basis of entrepreneurial action, and conversely, that entrepreneurial action is networking. In developing an "entrepreneurship as networking" model, the book addresses the persistent problems that plague the dominant "individual-opportunity" approach in entrepreneurship. They describe the key dynamics, mechanisms, and practices of entrepreneurship as networking, and point at fruitful networking strategies for entrepreneurs. Thus, the authors provide an integrated and dynamic account of entrepreneurial agency that prioritizes interaction with the surrounding social environment. They also explain what a viable network is for entrepreneurs and how networking activities affect their endeavours. Their perspective sheds new light on the origins of opportunities and how entrepreneurs access and mobilize resources. The approach also explains how entrepreneurs build legitimacy and exploit the networks they work within. Offering a groundbreaking theory of entrepreneurial action as networking, Entrepreneurship as Networking opens up an entirely new research agenda.
The Way Forward for Entrepreneurship Around the World We are in the midst of a startup revolution. The growth and proliferation of innovation-driven startup activity is profound, unprecedented, and global in scope. Today, it is understood that communities of support and knowledge-sharing go along with other resources. The importance of collaboration and a long-term commitment has gained wider acceptance. These principles are adopted in many startup communities throughout the world. And yet, much more work is needed. Startup activity is highly concentrated in large cities. Governments and other actors such as large corporations and universities are not collaborating with each other nor with entrepreneurs as well as they could. Too often, these actors try to control activity or impose their view from the top-down, rather than supporting an environment that is led from the bottom-up. We continue to see a disconnect between an entrepreneurial mindset and that of many actors who wish to engage with and support entrepreneurship. There are structural reasons for this, but we can overcome many of these obstacles with appropriate focus and sustained practice. No one tells this story better than Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem explores what makes startup communities thrive and how to improve collaboration in these rapidly evolving, complex environments. The Startup Community Way is an explanatory guide for startup communities. Rooted in the theory of complex systems, this book establishes the systemic properties of entrepreneurial ecosystems and explains why their complex nature leads people to make predictable mistakes. As complex systems, value creation occurs in startup communities primarily through the interaction of the "parts" - the people, organizations, resources, and conditions involved - not the parts themselves. This continual process of bottom-up interactions unfolds naturally, producing value in novel and unexpected ways. Through these complex, emergent processes, the whole becomes greater and substantially different than what the parts alone could produce. Because of this, participants must take a fundamentally different approach than is common in much of our civic and professional lives. Participants must take a whole-system view, rather than simply trying to optimize their individual part. They must prioritize experimentation and learning over planning and execution. Complex systems are uncertain and unpredictable. They cannot be controlled, only guided and influenced. Each startup community is unique. Replication is enticing but impossible. The race to become "The Next Silicon Valley" is futile - even Silicon Valley couldn't recreate itself. This book: Offers practical advice for entrepreneurs, community builders, government officials, and other stakeholders who want to harness the power of entrepreneurship in their city Describes the core components of startup communities and entrepreneurial ecosystems, as well as an explanation of the differences between these two related, but distinct concepts Advances a new framework for effective startup community building based on the theory of complex systems and insights from systems thinking Includes contributions from leading entrepreneurial voices Is a must-have resource for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, executives, business and community leaders, economic development authorities, policymakers, university officials, and anyone wishing to understand how startup communities work anywhere in the world
Entrepreneurship is undoubtedly a social process and creating a firm requires both the mobilization of social networks and the use of social capital. This book addresses the gap that exists between the need to take these factors into consideration and the understanding of how network relationships are developed and transformed across the venturing process.
