Preface

Why Do We Write This Book?

Is this another book about entrepreneurship? There are so many books about entrepreneurship. Why would anyone write yet another book?

We write this book for many reasons:

• First, almost all existing books are written by successful entrepreneurs, not university professors. The problem is that these entrepreneurs may not be good teachers. You may have heard that Great athelets may not be great coaches. and vice versa. Some people are so good at what they do, they cannot understand why others cannot accomplish the same thing. Many people have similar experience: “This teacher seems brilliant. However, I cannot understand the materials.” Some teachers have similar questions, “This topic is so easy. How can it be possible that some students do not understand?”

  The authors of this book are professors and have been interacting with thousands of students in classrooms, research laboratories, and many other situations. We understand that everyone is unique.

• Second, this is one of few books focusing on entrepreneurship in university environment. In fact, we have not found any book that is written exclusively for university entrepreneurs. Some books discuss the policies aspects entrepreneurship programs in universities. These books are written for university administrators (presidents, provosts, deans). This book is written for students and professors.

• Third, perhaps the most important, this book is not a “cheerleader” book telling readers that “Yes, you can do it.”. Instead, this book wants to give readers complete views about the pros and cons of being entreprenurs. Some people say, “Everyone should be entreprenur.”. This is as invalid as saying “Everyone should be run marathon.” or “Everyone should play piano.” or “Everyone should eat spicy food.” or “Everyone should drive a sport car.”

  We do not think “everyone should be an entreprenur or an engineer or a musician or a dancer or an athelete.” We want to help readers find their career paths and passions (these two things are often, but not always, related).

• Fourth, this book covers many aspects about entrepreneurship. Many books cover only a few aspects, such as customer and market, or team management, or raising fund. These books provide details about the specific subjects but they lack the overview of the many activities entrepreneurs have to engage.

• Finally, this book is filled with actions. We are professors and we understand that talking does not translate to learning. You must have this experience: a teacher keeps talking and most students’ minds already leave the classrooms. The subject does not matter. Listening is not how humans learn. Humans must learn by doing. Imagine that you want to learn sports (soccer, basketball, tennis…) by watching video without touching a ball. It does not work. Yet, many books adopt exactly the same approach by telling readers what they should know, without asking them to do anything.

  In contrast, this book has exercises telling readers to take actions. These actions help readers truly understand the content.

Common Misunderstanding About Entrepreneurship

We want to write this book because there is a lot of misunderstanding about entrepreneurship. In our experience, when this word is brought up, common responses include

• Money:

  • I am not interested becoming super rich.

  • It is all about money.

  • I do not have money.

  • I need money to start.

  • University will get a lot of money from startups.

  • University should not be in the business of making money.

• Idea:

  • I don’t have an idea.

  • I need an idea.

  • I don’t want to talk to you because you will steal my idea.

• University’s Mission:

  • University should focus on education, not business.

  • Professors should focus on education, not business.

  • Professors should focus on research, not business.

  • Students should focus on learning and getting good grades, not business.

Are you one of these people thinking entrepreneurship means one of several of the above?

For a short moment, can you completely forget the word entrepreneurship and answer the following questions?

• Should a university encourage the discovery of people’s needs and create solutions?

• Should a university encourage the exploration of different career opportunities?

• Should a university encourage better communication among diverse people?

• Should a university encourage teamwork?

These are the reasons why universities have entrepreneurship programs. These are the reasons we write this book: help readers understand entrepreneurship and create solutions to meet the needs of people.

Entrepreneurship Is About Money: WRONG

One of the common mistakes about entrepreneurship is to summarize it to a single word: Money.

When you talk about a university, do you think about only the classrooms? No. You also think about student clubs, research laboratories, sport facilities, and many more.

When you talk about a house, do you think about only the bedrooms? No. You also think about the kithen, the dining room, the living room, the laundry room, the bathroom. In fact, you may also think about the memory of spending happy time with your family. You may think about the weather, the neighbors, and many more.

When you talk about entrepreneurship, why do you think about only money? Entrepreneurship means much more than money. It means solving problems for people. It means understanding their needs. Entrepreneurship means teamwork, management, communication, production, distribution channels, brand recognition, and many more.

If you insist that entrepreneurship is only about money and nothing else, please put down this book. This book is not for you.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is written for specific audience: university students, professors, administrators (department chairs, deans, presidents), as well as anyone that wants to connect entrepreneurship with education. Many topics are related to the environments in universities. If you have no close relationship with any university for any reason, you will probably find this book irrelevant to you.

Note

We have just done one important thing in entrepreneurship: Understand the needs of people. This book aims to serve specific groups of people, not everyone

One important aspect of entrepreneurship is to understand customers: who are they and what they need. Another common mistake of beginning entrepreneurs is the attempt to target too many customers and as a result without anything attractive to any specific group of customers. Imagine that a music concert includes classic, jazz, country, and rock. It is likely that this concert appeals to nobody.

This book will provide some general concepts about entrepreneurship, by our interpretation. Then, the book will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exploring entrepreneurship in universities.

Structure Of This Book

This book has parts:

• General concepts about entrepreneurship: What is entrepreneurship and what is it not? Why is entrepreneurs the right career paths for some people, but not others?

• Entrepreneurship and universities.

• Suggestions for Students.

• Suggestions for Professors.

• Suggestions for Alumni.

• Suggestions for Administrators.

Open-Source Book

We make no money from this book. Everyone can read the book online. In fact, we even publish the source text (including the formatting marks) of this book; in other words, this book is open-source. We decide not to sell this book so that as many people as possible can have access to this book and benefit from the content.

Paper copies of this book are available using print on demand.