This book discusses topical issues in entrepreneurship organized around the various stages of venture creation, development and performance. It is arranged in several parts, dealing with the pre-start stage, followed by venture creation, financing ventures, venture development, and venture performance. Each part contains several chapters written by experts in the relevant field. The multi-disciplinary flavor of the book is complemented by its international evidence base, featuring results from a range of different countries. The book will help researchers and practitioners who want to pinpoint the key points emerging from the latest academic thinking.

Small Firm Growth comprehensively reviews the empirical literature on small firm growth to highlight and integrate what is known about this phenomenon and take stock of what past experiences of researching this area implies for how the phenomenon can or should be studied in future research.

The contributors to this book provide a cross-national comparison of venture emergence, newness and growth. Their chapters examine the influences of cultural, social and economic factors on venture development, compare the approaches of entrepreneurs who move from idea to emerging organization, and investigate acquisition and development of resources in growth and performance. The authors consider important issues in new ventures research such as technology commercialization, management team development, and influence of equity funding. While its particular focus is on Norway and the US, the book offers broad and intriguing contributions with regard to the emergence and growth of knowledge based firms in developed economies, and has implications for both direct and indirect government policy with regard to stimulating the formation and development of knowledge based firms. Scholars and students of entrepreneurship, international studies and economics, policymakers, international business experts and economic development specialists will find this rigorous analysis of the utmost importance.

This open access book focuses on explaining differences amongst organizations regarding various attributes, forms, and outcomes. By focusing on the “how” of new venture creation and management to produce well-established organizations, the authors aim to increase our understanding of the antecedents of most management research assumptions. New ventures are the source of most newly created jobs generated in an economy, new industries and markets, innovative products and services, and new solutions to economic, social, and environmental problems. However, most management research assumes a well-established organization as the starting point of their theorizing. Building on the notion of guided attention, it details how entrepreneurs can allocate their transient attention to identify potential opportunities from environmental change and how entrepreneurs allocate their sustained attention to form beliefs about radical and incremental opportunities requiring entrepreneurial action. The authors explain how entrepreneurs build such communities and engage community members over time to co-construct potential opportunities for new venture progress. Using the lean startup framework, they connect the dots between the theorizing on identifying and co-constructing potential opportunities and the startup of new ventures. This leads to a new overarching framework based on are (1) co-creating a startup, (2) organizing a startup, and (3) performing a startup to bring together the many disparate threads of research on new ventures. The authors then theorize on the importance of knowledge in organizational scaling. Based on cutting-edge research from the leading entrepreneurship journals, this book expands knowledge on the cognitive aspect of the new venture creation process.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

This textbook is intended for use in introductory Entrepreneurship classes at the undergraduate level. Due to the wide range of audiences and course approaches, the book is designed to be as flexible as possible. Theoretical and practical aspects are presented in a balanced manner, and specific components such as the business plan are provided in multiple formats. Entrepreneurship aims to drive students toward active participation in entrepreneurial roles, and exposes them to a wide range of companies and scenarios.

Small businesses have much different growth patterns than large corporations. Small business owners who look to large corporations for insight and guidance on how to grow their own businesses often feel overwhelmed and demotivated. "The Small Business Life Cycle" lays out the five stages of small business growth and explains how you can navigate each stage in your business. To be successful, you have to take the right steps at the right time. Each stage has different challenges, strengths, inconvenient truths, and ways forward. This guide shows you where to focus your resources in each stage so you can grow your business efficiently. Whether you're thinking about starting a small business or you've been in business for a while, "The Small Business Life Cycle" will give you a better gauge to evaluate where you are and what you need to do next. If you're growing fast and want to keep growing, this book will show you how to do it strategically. And if you're stuck and don't know what to do, you can determine what stage your business is in now and figure out what you need to do next to get unstuck. This guide will specifically help you work through: Questions to ask before you start your own small business How to get a foothold in the market and why you should be marketing fewer things to fewer audiences Why some "successful" products and services will cause you to get stuck and lose momentum What four things must be in place to grow your business How not to break a successful, scalable small business once you've got it there This no-fluff guide will lay out the foundation upon which you can grow your small business. The only question left to answer is: what's your next action?