Written by bestselling authors Heidi M. Neck, Christopher P. Neck, and Emma L. Murray, Introduction to Business explores the fundamental building blocks of modern business while addressing social impact, ethics, and the power of innovation throughout. Cases on startups, small businesses, and corporations will ignite student interest as they learn from today’s most forward-looking organizations. Regardless of your students’ career aspirations, they will develop the mindset and skillset they need to succeed in their professional journeys.
Heidi Neck, PhD, is a Babson College professor and the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurial
Studies. She is the academic director of the Babson Academy, a dedicated unit within
Babson that inspires change in the way universities, specifically their faculty and students, teach
and learn entrepreneurship. The Babson Academy builds on Neck’s work starting the Babson Collaborative,
a global institutional membership organization for colleges and universities seeking to
increase their capability and capacity in entrepreneurship education, and leading Babson’s Symposia
for Entrepreneurship Educators (SEE), programs designed to further develop faculty from
around the world in the art and craft of teaching entrepreneurship and building entrepreneurship
programs. Neck has directly trained more than 3,000 faculty around the world in the art and craft
of teaching entrepreneurship.
She has taught entrepreneurship at the undergraduate, MBA, and executive levels. Neck is a
past president of the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE),
an academic organization dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship education. Her
research interests include entrepreneurship education, the entrepreneurial mindset, and entrepreneurship
inside organizations. An award-winning educator and author, her textbook Entrepreneurship:
The Practice and Mindset (2017) was awarded Breakthrough Book of 2017 by SAGE and the
2018 Most Promising New Textbook award by the Textbook & Academic Authors Association.
Neck is the lead author of Teaching Entrepreneurship: A Practice-Based Approach (Elgar), a book written
to help educators teach entrepreneurship in more experiential and engaging ways. Additionally,
she has published 45+ book chapters, research monographs, and refereed articles.
Neck has been recognized for teaching excellence at Babson for undergraduate, graduate, and
executive education. She has also been recognized by international organizations the Academy of
Management and USASBE for excellence in pedagogy and course design. For pushing the frontiers
of entrepreneurship education in higher education, The Schulze Foundation and the Entrepreneur
and Innovation Exchange awarded her Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year in 2016.
Dr. Christopher P. Neck is an associate professor of management at Arizona State University, where he held the title “University Master Teacher.” From 1994 to 2009, he was part of the Pamplin College of Business faculty at Virginia Tech. He received his PhD in management from Arizona State University and his MBA from Louisiana State University. Neck is author or coauthor of 22 books, including Self-Leadership: The Definitive Guide to Personal Excellence (2017, Sage; 2nd ed., 2019); Get a Kick Out of Life: Expect the Best of Your Body, Mind, and Soul at Any Age (2017, Clovercroft); Fit to Lead: The Proven 8-Week Solution for Shaping Up Your Body, Your Mind, and Your Career (2004, St. Martin’s Press; 2012, Carpenter’s Sons); Mastering Self-Leadership: Empowering Yourself for Personal Excellence (6th ed., 2013, Pearson); The Wisdom of Solomon at Work (2001, Berrett-Koehler); For Team Members Only: Making Your Workplace Team Productive and Hassle-Free (1997, Amacom Books); and Medicine for the Mind: Healing Words to Help You Soar (4th ed., Wiley, 2012). Neck is also the coauthor of an introductory entrepreneurship textbook, Entrepreneurship (Sage, 2017; 2nd ed., 2020), and an introductory organizational behavior textbook, Organizational Behavior (Sage, 2017; 2nd ed., Sage, 2019).
Dr. Neck’s research specialties include employee/executive fitness, self-leadership, leadership, group decision-making processes, and self-managing teams. He has submitted over 100 publications in the form of books, chapters, and articles in various journals. Some of the outlets in which Neck’s work has appeared include Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Executive Excellence, Human Relations, Human Resource Development Quarterly, Journal of Leadership Studies, Educational Leadership, and The Commercial Law Journal.
Neck is the deputy editor of the Journal of Leadership and Management. Due to Neck’s expertise in management, he has been cited in numerous national publications, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune.
Dr. Neck was recently voted a semifinalist (out of 140 nominations) for the prestigious international 2020 Baylor University Cherry Award for Great Teaching. Neck was also the recipient of the 2007 Business Week Favorite Professor Award.
Dr. Neck has taught over 60,000 students during his career in higher education. Neck currently teaches a mega section of Management Principles to approximately 900 students at Arizona State University.
Neck was the recipient of the 2020 John W. Teets Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award (voted by W. P. Carey students). Neck also received the Order of Omega Outstanding Teaching Award for 2012 awarded to one professor at Arizona State University by the Alpha Lamda chapter of this leadership fraternity. His class sizes at Virginia Tech reached 2,500 students. He received numerous teaching awards during his tenure at Virginia Tech, including the 2002 Wine Award for Teaching Excellence. Also, Neck was the 10-time winner (1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009) of the “Students’ Choice Teacher of the Year Award” (voted by the students for the best teacher of the year within the entire university). Some of the organizations who have participated in Neck’s management development training include GE/Toshiba, Busch Gardens, Clark Construction, the United States Army, Crestar, American Family Insurance, Sales and Marketing Executives International, American Airlines, American Electric Power, W. L. Gore & Associates, Dillard’s Department Stores, and Prudential Life Insurance. Neck is also an avid runner. He has completed 12 marathons, including the Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon, and the San Diego Marathon. In fact, his personal record for a single long-distance run is 48 miles.
Emma L. Murray completed a bachelor of arts degree in English and Spanish at University College Dublin (UCD) in County Dublin, Ireland. This was followed by a higher diploma (Hdip) in business studies and information technology at the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business in County Dublin, Ireland. Following her studies, Emma spent nearly a decade in investment banking before becoming a full-time writer and author.
As a writer, Emma has worked on numerous texts, including business and economics, self-help, and psychology. Within the field of higher education, Emma worked with Dr. Christopher P. Neck and Dr. Jeffery D. Houghton on Management (Wiley, 2013); an introductory entrepreneurship textbook, Entrepreneurship (Sage, 2017; 2nd ed., 2020); and an introductory organizational behavior textbook, Organizational Behavior (2017; 2nd ed., Sage, 2019). She is the author of The Unauthorized Guide to Doing Business the Alan Sugar Way (2010, Wiley-Capstone) and the lead author of How to Succeed as a Freelancer in Publishing (2010, How To Books). She lives in London.
