Entrepreneurship: Starting, Growing and Maintaining Innovative Ventures

This comprehensive yet practical and engaging text provides readers with the fundamental knowledge, insights, concepts and tools that are essential in starting, growing and scaling ventures. The text is designed to prepare business and non-business students for the wide array of issues and situations they might confront during the venture creation, growing and scaling processes. Hence, it provides strategies and techniques that will help them: search for ideas; screen ideas for opportunities; plan to exploit opportunities; set up and start the venture; scale operations; grow the venture and; harvest the value created in the business. Readers will find that the text focuses on value creation as the driver of the entrepreneurial process. Topics covered include: Fundamentals of entrepreneurship The venture formation process Business format selection Pre-launch Documents and protection systems Opportunity identification and value assessment Concept assessment and development Creativity, innovation and idea generation techniques Implications of blockchain on innovation and entrepreneurship Design Thinking Corporate entrepreneurship Venture team development Business plan development Developing winning business models Venture financing Venture financial analysis Valuation of entrepreneurial ventures Exit and harvesting strategies Franchising and the franchise relational model