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Last Updated: Mar 26, 2024 11:39 AM

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Resource Guides

The Guides listed below were created by Mark Bieraugel from Robert E. Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State University.

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Recommended Reading

The Lean Startup cover art

The Lean Startup

The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on "validated learning," rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, "The Lean Startup" offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it's too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever. "From the Hardcover edition."

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Burn the Business Plan

Burn the Business Plan punctures the myth of the cool, tech-savvy twenty-something entrepreneur with nothing to lose and venture capital to burn. In fact most people who start businesses are juggling careers and mortgages just like you. The average entrepreneur is actually thirty-nine years old, and the success rate of entrepreneurs over forty is five times higher than that of those under age thirty. Entrepreneurs who come out of the corporate world often have discovered a need for a product or service and have valuable contacts to help them get started.

Filled with stories of successful entrepreneurs who drew on real-life experience rather than academic coursework, Burn the Business Plan is the guide to starting and running a business that will actually work for the rest of us.

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Start-Up

This guide for aspiring entrepreneurs provides expert advice on every aspect of launching a new business. It is designed to be of particular value for academics wishing to exploit the commercial value of a new technology or business solution. Inspiring and readable, it shows how to evaluate the strength of a business idea, how to protect inventions, reviews legal steps and responsibilities, shows how to position products in the market, how to create a business plan and raise initial capital. Case studies, exercises and tips demystify the process of starting a business, build confidence and greatly increase the chances of success.

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Loonshots

What do James Bond and Lipitor have in common? What can we learn about human nature and world history from a glass of water? In Loonshots, physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs.

Drawing on the science of phase transitions, Bahcall shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing wild new ideas to rigidly rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice.

The B Corp Handbook, Second Edition cover art

The B Corp Handbook, Second Edition

B Corps are a global movement of more than 2,700 companies in 60 countries--like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, Kickstarter, Danone North America, and Eileen Fisher--that are using the power of business as a force for good. B Corps have been certified to have met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. This book is the authoritative guide to the what, why, and how of B Corp certification.

While this book is framed around the B Corp movement, any company, regardless of size, industry, or location, can use the tools contained here to learn how to build a better business. As the authors vividly demonstrate, using business as a force for good can help you attract and retain the best talent, distinguish your company in a crowded market, and increase trust in your brand.