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Week of December 6 - December 10, 2004Welcome to the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship, an initiative of the Public Forum Institute made possible by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City. Through NDE-news, we bring you short summaries and analyses of various trends driving the innovation economy. Subscribe now to receive your weekly copy. Archived issues are available online. Links to the day's entrepreneurship stories from across the nation and around the world are posted each weekday on the NDE main page - bookmark it and stay informed about the latest entrepreneurship news. |
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If your holiday shopping list includes entrepreneurs or fans of entrepreneurship, you’ll love this edition of NDE-news: our annual Holiday Books Issue. Below, we will list a handful of books (published in 2004) that should interest the active or aspiring entrepreneur or simply those who love these topics. All listed books are available at major retailers and on-line booksellers. |
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Guy Kawasaki, The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything (Portfolio, 2004)
This book’s hype—to help the reader “start anything” might be a little strong. Yet, you might start a business thanks to this book. It is a fun read and full of useful and interesting tidbits for those starting a new business or a new organization. Guy Kawasaki is well known in the technology field as a popular speaker and the founder of Garage Technology Ventures (www.garage.com). He takes these experiences and presents them in a funny and insightful way. These tips don’t just cover the nitty-gritty of running a business, but also deal with the vision and goals for such ventures. In all cases, Kawasaki urges entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs to think big. |
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Stacey Mayo, I Can’t Believe I Get Paid to Do This: Remarkable People Reveal 26 Proven Strategies for Making Your Dreams a Reality (Gold Leaf Publishing 2004)
Starting a successful business requires that one dream – and think big. Mayo, who bills herself as the “Dream Queen,” offers lots of inspiring and interesting stories of people who have successfully fulfilled their dreams. The book includes interviews with a diverse mix of people including Atlanta Braves pitcher Tom Glavine, Stacy Allison, the first American woman to climb Mt. Everest, and a host of others. If you feel stuck in a rut and are ready to try something different, this book will be right on target for you. |
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C.K. Prahalad, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits (Wharton School Publishing, 2004).
Prahalad is probably best known as co-author of Competing for the Future, a popular 1990s management guide. He has now set his sights on a tougher job: eliminating poverty throughout the world. Prahalad argues that the world’s poor are also the world’s largest emerging market. Prahalad offers case studies of businesses and business models that have succeeded in serving poor residents of India, Mexico, and elsewhere. Prahalad proposes a win-win solution for the world’s leading corporations. If they can re-engineer to effectively serve these new markets, they will not only generate great profits for themselves. They will also make an important contribution to alleviating Third World poverty. |
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Harold Evans, They Made America: Two Centuries of Innovators from the Steam Engine to the Search Engine (Little Brown, 2004), and
Historians are beginning to understand the central role that entrepreneurs have played in building the US and affecting its economic, political, and cultural outlook. Two new histories will help bring this message to a popular audience. Harold Evans’ They Made America has received a great deal of publicity, and has even spawned an accompanying television series on PBS. This work is something of a coffee table book about entrepreneurship, chock full of interesting illustrated portraits of fascinating entrepreneurs and innovators like Thomas Edison, George Doriot (a venture capital pioneer), and Ida Rosenthal (inventor of the Maidenform bra).
John Steele Gordon is well known for his regular columns in American Heritage and other journals. An Empire of Wealth offers a popular and easy-to-read history of America’s economic growth. Like Evans, Gordon opts to tell this history via interesting biographies and stories. You’ll get the expected portraits of Gates, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and other entrepreneurs, but you’ll also learn about the origins of the Great Depression, the early 19th century debates over a national banking system, and the development of innovative technologies like the computer and electricity. |
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For Policy Wonks:
This edited volume collects papers from a distinguished group of economists who participated in a 2001 conference sponsored by Syracuse University. Contributors tackle a host of issues, including how public policy can stimulate entrepreneurship, the role of entrepreneurship in promoting upward mobility, and what Holtz-Eakin calls “entrepreneurship in unexpected places” (i.e. large corporations and non-profit organizations). The wide range of contributions means that the volume has no one single theme, but it does offer some of the latest academic thinking on the links between public policy and entrepreneurship. |
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Josh Lerner and Adam B. Jaffe, Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What To Do About It, (Princeton University Press, 2004)
As intellectual capital becomes the key ingredient in wealth creation and competitiveness, an effective patent and intellectual property system assumes greater importance as a generator and protector of such wealth. Unfortunately, Lerner and Jaffe find that America’s patent system is not effectively serving such purposes. Instead, the system has become too slow, bureaucratic, and litigious. Lerner and Jaffe don’t just bemoan the current state of affairs; they also offer a three-pronged solution that seeks to reduce patent litigation, streamline the current patent review process, and enhance the expertise of patent review officials and judges. |
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David C. Mowery, Richard R. Nelson, Bhaven N. Sampat, and Arvids A. Ziedonis, Ivory Tower and Industrial Innovation: University-Industry Technology Transfer before and after the Bayh-Dole Act. (Stanford University Press, 2004).
This co-authored volume examines the state of university technology transfer, and there probably is no better place to get a detailed review of the history and issues surrounding ties between academia and private industry. For many casual observers, the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act transformed this relationship and revolutionized the field of technology transfer. The authors show that significant transfer activity was already underway prior to 1980; the Act simply harmonized federal policy with existing practice. In fact, it is possible that Bayh-Dole simply triggered a rise in patenting by universities while having little impact on the quality of such patents. The authors also warn that trends toward increasing privatization and closer university-business ties need to be closely reviewed to ensure that truly non-biased scientific inquiry can continue at America’s research universities. |
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