Richard Schulze Distinguished Professor / Rawls College of Business / Texas Tech University
Best Buy Founder Dick Schulze was once asked if he ever thought about closing Best Buy if it did not meet certain benchmarks for financial returns. Schulze responded with relaxed confidence: "No, there was never a point I would have thrown in the towel; failure was not an option." That quote explains much of what is to be learned from Schulze's book.
This is an excellent entrepreneurship textbook. It provides an understanding of the who, what and why of entrepreneurship, including how to assemble resources and launch the venture. It provides guidance on how to run a lasting business and harvest the rewards. Case studies are appropriately used throughout the text to illustrate concepts and techniques.
This book is useful for the one-person start up all the way up to the corporate board launching a new endeavor. It provides a powerful framework for innovation and lean thinking for both current and new entrepreneurs. It provides a method for managing innovation through minimum viable products, evolving them through learning with actionable metrics to achieve successful products and services.
By nature entrepreneurship tends to be a chaotic process of trying, failing, inventing and reinventing. "Disciplined Entrepreneurship" provides a useful structure that reduces this chaos, by providing 24 steps to track and progress through the entrepreneurship process. The steps are not simply sequential. Rather, entrepreneurs will go backwards and forwards within the steps as new challenges and obstacles arise. Nonetheless, the 24-step framework works as a useful road map to ensure key activities are not overlooked and the process is well managed.
Provides excellent tools for pitching a new product or service, proposing a process improvement, or for entrepreneurs seeking funds for a start-up. Shows, with examples, how to crunch the numbers and pitch your idea.
Great read for anyone wanting to know the uncomfortable truths about creating and leading a company. Inspiring story from a silicon valley entrepreneur who provides a compelling guide for protecting your start up from self inflicting wounds. Inspirational, insightful and amusing perspectives from someone who has been there. Author donates 100% of royalties to help women in developing countries gain basic civil rights.