Entrepreneurship: An Innovator's Guide to Startups and Corporate Ventures

Structured around the idea that innovation is at the core of successful entrepreneurship, this insightful guide by Meyer and Crane establishes innovation as a necessary first step before writing a business plan or developing a financial model. With a focus on pragmatic methods for gaining industry and customer insight and translating this insight into innovative product and service solutions, Meyer and Crane help students design robust business models, financial projections, business plans, and investor presentations. New Venture Creation is devoted to helping students develop compelling business ideas. This is based not only on the authors’ well-known research in product and service innovation, but also on their extensive experience as successful entrepreneurs and investors.

In the updated Second Edition, part I guides students through six elements that comprise a clearly defined and focused venture: defining your target industry; defining your target customers; defining the needs and wants of those customers; defining winning product and service solutions; carefully designing a strong business model; determining competitive positioning, and then testing the entire concept against a small population of target customers―all before writing the plan. Think, design, test, and learn are the guiding principles. Part II then focuses on different types of investors and the process for raising capital, creating realistic financial projections, writing a concise but powerful business plan, organizing the venture team, and creating a compelling pitch that speaks to the needs and concerns of investors. The book also includes a number of independent case studies that focus on product, service, and business model innovation―all from recent ventures by students as well as recent college or master’s level graduates.

Marc H. Meyer is the Robert J. Shillman professor of Entrepreneurship at Northeastern University, as well as a Matthews Distinguished University Professor. Dr. Meyer is the founder of Northeastern University’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group in the College of Business Administration, where he has helped numerous students and alumni start their own companies. He is also director of High Tech MBA, a program focused on innovation within established corporations. He also helps direct Northeastern’s Center of Entrepreneurship Education, an interdisciplinary, experiential “system of entrepreneurship” where undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni learn the principles of entrepreneurial thinking and planning, and then launch new companies.

An internationally recognized scholar in the field of research and innovation, Dr. Meyer is the author of The Power of Product Platforms (written with Alvin P. Lehnerd, The Free Press, NY, 1997) and The Fast Path to Corporate Growth: Leveraging Knowledge and Technologies to New Market Applications, for which he received the Maurice Holland Award from the Industrial Research Institute (Oxford University Press, NY, 2007). Dr. Meyer is a graduate of Harvard College and holds his master’s and doctoral degrees from MIT.

Frederick G. Crane is an executive professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the College of Business at Northeastern University, Editor of the Journal of the Academy of Business Education, and co-founder of Ceilidh Insights LLC, an innovation management training, intellectual property consulting, and consumer insight company. He was formerly a professor of marketing and entrepreneurship at the University of New Hampshire and a chair and full professor at Dalhousie University. He currently teaches courses in entrepreneurship, innovation, and entrepreneurial marketing.

His academic research activities have resulted in more than 100 publications, including fifteen books. Additionally, he currently serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals. His current research stream intersects the domains of marketing, entrepreneurship, corporate venturing, and innovation, and he is conducting ongoing research on the psychology of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial education, entrepreneurial branding, and innovation readiness. Dr. Crane is also an award-winning educator who has received numerous honors for teaching excellence over the past twenty years.