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Harvard Business Review Entrepreneur's Handbook Summary
About Harvard Business Review Entrepreneur's Handbook Book
The one primer you need to develop your entrepreneurial skills.
Whether you're imagining your new business to be the next big thing in Silicon Valley, a pivotal B2B provider, or an anchor in your local community, the HBR Entrepreneur's Handbook is your essential resource for getting your company off the ground.
Starting an independent new business is rife with both opportunity and risk. And as an entrepreneur, you're the one in charge: your actions can make or break your business. You need to know the tried-and-true fundamentals--from writing a business plan to getting your first loan. You also need to know the latest thinking on how to create an irresistible pitch deck, mitigate risk through experimentation, and develop unique opportunities through business model innovation.
The HBR Entrepreneur's Handbook addresses these challenges and more with practical advice and wisdom from Harvard Business Review's archive. Keep this comprehensive guide with you throughout your startup's life--and increase your business's odds for success.
In the HBR Entrepreneur's Handbook you'll find:
- Step-by-step guidance through the entrepreneurial process
- Concise explanations of the latest research and thinking on entrepreneurship from Harvard Business Review contributors such as Marc Andreessen and Reid Hoffman
- Time-honed best practices
- Stories of real companies, from Airbnb to eBay
You'll learn:
- Which skills and characteristics make for the best entrepreneurs
- How to gauge potential opportunities
- The basics of business models and competitive strategy
- How to test your assumptions--before you build a whole business
- How to select the right legal structure for your company
- How to navigate funding options, from venture capital and angel investors to accelerators and crowdfunding
- How to develop sales and marketing programs for your venture
- What entrepreneurial leaders must do to build culture and set direction as the business keeps growing
HBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, real-life stories, and concise explanations of research published in Harvard Business Review, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the pack--whatever your role.
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Is starting a business right for you?
Without these elements—a full understanding of a problem, new connections, and a vision or direction for a solution—there is no entrepreneurial venture. Whether the problem you’ve identified is global or local, broad or niche, your ability to spot it and conceive new solutions is a core element of entrepreneurship. And passion about the problem you are solving might not be as important as you think.
To launch a successful venture, you must also make other people see the merits of your idea and invest in it—whether they are employees, customers, or funders.
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Identifying a problem to solve
A business opportunity is primarily a product or service that creates significant value for customers and offers significant profit potential to the entrepreneur.
A business opportunity:
- Solves a real problem for customers
- Offers significant risk-adjusted profit potential
- Fits well with the capabilities of the leadership team
- Is potentially profitable over a reasonable time span
- Is amenable to financing.
Evaluate promising opportunities by considering the market, the current and anticipated level of competition, the underlying economics, and the resources you’ll need to be successful
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Defining your business model and strategy
A business model describes how an enterprise proposes to make money.
A well-conceived and promising business model is only half the equation for success because it doesn’t take into account the market competition.
Dealing with competition is the job of strategy. Strategy is a plan to differentiate the enterprise and give it a competitive advantage. A successful business has both a solid business model and a good strategy.
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This is the introduction
Introduction
William Bygrave, a scholar and practitioner of entrepreneurship, describes an entrepreneur as someone who not only perceives an opportunity but also “creates an organization to pursue it.”
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