Entrepreneurs - Publications - Faculty & Research

23 Jan 2019
News

Worm Capital Q&A With Clayton Christensen On Innovation -- And His New Book "The Prosperity Paradox"

2024
Working Paper

Charting (and Updating) the Path: A Bayesian Perspective on Entrepreneurial Learning

This chapter explores two distinct modes of entrepreneurial learning: assessing venture viability and choosing between alternative development paths. It introduces a framework for decomposing venture viability into technological feasibility, commercial potential and... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Learning

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April 2000 (Revised April 2004)
Case

TixToGo: Financing a Silicon Valley Start-up

Describes TixToGo, a Silicon Valley start-up company that offers online solutions to individuals and organizations that want to offer activities and/or collect registration fees for events over the Internet. A serial entrepreneur and his partner started the company in... View Details

Keywords: Business Model; Information Technology; Financing and Loans; Business Startups; Information Technology Industry; San Francisco

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22 Jul 2021
News

China’s Push to Purge Organized Crime Casts Shadow Over Private Businesses

2021
Book

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success

By: Thomas R. Eisenmann

Why Startups Fail explores entrepreneurial failure, examining its predictable patterns, how to avoid them, and how to cope when failure does occur. Part I looks at three common failure patterns for early-stage startups, illustrating each with an anchor case... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Failure; Success; Framework

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18 Apr 2014
Blog Post

Reflecting on the HBS Search Summit

Entrepreneurship and immediate impact are professional themes that continue to resonate with HBS students. Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition, a popular 2nd year course taught by Rick Ruback and Royce Yudkoff, teaches specific practical skills that are required to... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship

10 Mar 2008
Research & Ideas

Encouraging Entrepreneurs: Lessons for Government Policy

It's common wisdom: When it comes to starting a new business, it matters who you know and how much money you have. But research into the inspiration and success of entrepreneurs has not delved very deeply into why this is so. Does it... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna

12 Oct 1999
Research & Ideas

The Intellectual Underpinnings of Entrepreneurial Management

of entrepreneurs was to bear risk, Cantillon focused his attention on the economic functions of entrepreneurship—a focus that was to hold sway until very recently. In various economic approaches to entrepreneurship, we can identify three... View Details

Keywords: by Howard H. Stevenson & Teresa M. Amabile

June 19, 2023
Article

Should You Start a Generative AI Company?

By: Julian De Freitas

Many entrepreneurs are considering starting companies that leverage the latest generative AI technology, but they must ask themselves whether they have what it takes to compete on increasingly commoditized foundational models, or whether they should instead... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; AI and Machine Learning; Applications and Software

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April 1999 (Revised February 2001)
Case

Davis Boatworks

By: Howard H. Stevenson, Michael J. Roberts and Matthew C. Lieb

A successful entrepreneur is considering his need for growth financing and his desire to achieve some personal liquidity. He has arguably the most successful sportfishing boat made, but sees the need both to grow further and to reduce his personal exposure to a... View Details

Keywords: Growth Management; Business Growth and Maturation; Personal Finance; Entrepreneurship; Manufacturing Industry

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21 Aug 2019
Video

Aban Pestonjee

Aban Pestonjee, one of Sri Lanka's most prominent entrepreneurs and the founder of Abans Group, one of the country's largest business groups, discusses the early diversification from import and retail into a... View Details

31 May 2015
News

Keep the Talent (and the Ideas) Right Here

07 Nov 2010
News

Being happy is a serious handicap

07 Feb 2011
Lessons from the Classroom

Creating the Founders’ Dilemmas Course

four sections of the course, with 68 students in each section. Some 170 more students were wait-listed. The course's popularity is a reflection of its universal nature—it addresses quandaries that virtually all entrepreneurs will face... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Education

August 2023 (Revised February 2024)
Case

DexAI

By: Jo Tango and Christina Wallace

During a challenging fundraising environment, the DexAI founders received two term sheets with nearly identical economic terms but very different legal ones. The entrepreneurs had to navigate: representations and warranties (their personal guarantees that the company's... View Details