Innovation and Entrepreneurship

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Product Description

Developed specifically for undergraduate students, Innovation and Entrepreneurship is an accessible, introductory text written primarily for those studying business and management but also engineering and science degrees with management courses.

The book features contemporary applications such as services (public and private), innovation for sustainability, social entrepreneurship, innovation for development, and creating and capturing value from innovation and entrepreneurship. In this second edition, the authors develop an explicit process model of entrepreneurship with clearer links between innovation and entrepreneurship.

The second edition� also features an extensive collection of web-based materials, including: tools to support innovation and entrepreneurship, audio and video cases, solutions manual, testbank, additional case studies and image archive.

An accompanying website is available at: www.iande.info

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Innovation and Entrepreneurship Review

Bottom line; it is a good textbook on the subject. Overall, it is a well written book on the topic and its exercises at the end of each chapter did force me to reevaluate what I got out of reading it. I would like to have seen the word "Creativity" incorporated or included in the books title, because it does cover that subject as well.

I hope future reviewers will redirect I and other readers to areas or websites not mentioned that can add to our understanding of innovation, "creativity" and entrepreneurship. I hope to review this book again in the coming months. I am limited by the amount of time I have currently to write this. In my next review, I hope to have the book in front of me and be more specific about its good points and areas I found it weak in, without repeating what I have written in this review.

After reading this book, I feel a little bit like Bubba in the movie Forest Gump. God help anyone, if they ask me a question about Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship after having read this book. They are likely to get a running dialog on the subject that will sound like Bubba's explaining how to cook shrimp. I worry that is kind of how this review might be interpreted. You decide. There is a lot more right about how well this textbook covered the subject, than what it didn't cover.

I got our instructor here at Haywood Community College, (North Carolina) to agree she would require everyone in our online class, (four other students), to read this book from cover to cover. I did not want to leave any stone unturned in exploring the topic of innovation. The regular class during its morning classes covered five of its chapter's, while our online class read the entire book from cover to cover, (fourteen chapters of reading). I am grateful, she agreed to do this.

The book was a difficult for me to read because I had never read this extensively on Innovation, (Creativity) and Entrepreneurship. I have been to 19 different trade schools, and taken about 70 or so classes as a "wanna be" wood worker, product designer, machinist and budding business owner. It explained many of the more complex subtle differences about being creative and trying to make money on your ideas in this era's computerized global and internet cultures, than I had read in the past.

Real life examples which were not all rags to riches stories, was what I wanted to get out of this class textbook and the assignments. I had read hundreds of inventors biographies before, that were good, but I wanted to get at the nuts and bolts of what innovation is, what it can be and how you incorporate it into your business ideas. I therefore tried to not read this textbook, like I was reading the cover story of Fortune magazine about who had made the latest and greatest innovation. I wanted to know how they'd engineered their innovation. The book covered that subject well at times I felt.

I am grateful the author's book opened up my eye's as to how globally dependent we are on each other. I was amazed and greatly saddened to learn how not all countries seem to agree on what constitutes the intellectual property rights of an innovation, its conception date and the fact that just because you were the first person to create the idea you therefore literally "owned" that idea, lock stock and barrel. I hope the authors will include more website links to read up on this matter than they did. Bear in mind that is my own desire, and not everyone finds the topic as fascinating as I do. I am a budding inventor, so that is why it is important to me at this time. I wish they had mentioned about our country's Inventor's Hall of Fame. Someone is also trying to start an Entrepreneur's Hall of Fame as well.

Reading this book was an good way to get me started studying this topic. I plan to reread certain sections of the book that I have highlighted as my business grows and my horizons change. Please bear in mind, I have never run a business successfully, so the comments that follow should be taken with that grain of salt and pepper observation, before accepting my opinions as the God's honest truth and as the last word on the topic. I am being honest here.

For that reason, I feel awkward, being critical of the book as I am a newcomer to the subject matter. For this reason, I offer my apologies to the writers of it if I seem to be too critical about what was not covered here in the last half of the review. Bear in mind, I tend to want to think globally, in a green way, and for that reason what I wanted to read about in the book that wasn't there, I am having to learn and find else where.

I found the book's last three chapters helped pull everything into a clearer focus at the end of our online class. I believe anyone seriously reading this book in class or on their own would be well served to use a high lighter and colored reference pens to emphasize the books key points, that they might want to read up on later. There was so much good information in the book on the three topics I have mentioned, I found that for me the only way to remember what I read was to make notes at the top of the page about what had been discussed on that page.

After reading each page I made copious reference notes at the top of each page about what was on each page. It was only specific information that I as a "wanna be" product designer / small industrial designer / owner of a craft and accessory company / industrial machinist needed to refer to later as my business grows. My book these days looks like a rain bow colored zebra when I page through it. If you are a business owner who hopes to use this book as a later guide, it is almost a necessity to do this.

Here are the books strongest points, that I found were useful for me;

-The company case studies, in the book were sometimes very detailed as to why the company succeeded or failed.

-The book suggested websites usually at the end of each chapter to go to if you wanted to explore a particular topic later in more depth than the book had space to cover.

-Its historical references and reviews on past and existing technologies was quite good, however some of what I needed to find out, I had to sometimes go elsewhere to do. (You can't be all things to all your readers in discussing this topic. There was too much material to cover to be able to do that adequately on every topic it covered.)

-Its patent, copyright, trademark and international intellectual property law section was well written. I felt was well covered, and showed how different cultures view those concepts differently in their cultures.

-I liked its outsourcing international sections, that they covered. I wish more references had been made to Thomas Friedman's book, The World Is Not Flat had been used. His insights (Friedman's), are good ones, although culturally biased, whether you agree with everything he says or not. He is an excellent writer and that is an amazing book to read.

-There are good exercises that required you to further read up on a specific topic if you wanted to be able to do the end of the chapter exercises well. Overall the chapter's were well divided, by their subject matter and enough material is found in the book to adequately answer the questions they ask of its students.

I understand that since the book was published the world has changed. It is good to admit that my observations were written two years after this book was published, so that has influenced what I am saying here.

Here is my constructive critique about what was written. I wish the authors will address these items in their next revision of the book;

-The author's I hope will address more the topic of global downturns as something the innovator and entrepreneur will be facing in the future. (Remember, what goes up, must come down over time.) The politics of the world under a Bush Administration, is different than the one of the Obama Administration, and we will have to see how that plays into this subject. Now, (today is 5/22/2009) that we are in an economic downturn, these kinds of insights and lessons learned from them I hope will be mentioned in the text. I believe the students educated on how bad economic can effect innovation and running a business will be better suited to dealing with the real and constantly changing world.

-If the author's do address this in their next edition of this book, I hope they will provide a list of websites to go to to find charts, listings and information about past economic downturns, that go many years back, (not just a few decades) in time to give them a real prospective on how economics can effect innovation . Nothing made me madder than having to go talk with a banker about the current economic downturn and how it had effected my accounts, than when they pulled out their studies of past economic downturns. Pitifully, their materials only went back to the end of World War II. They appeared to me to be like an ostrich with their head in the sand, not paying attention to earlier serious economic downturns that went three to six hundred years back. Their own ignorance about following certain sound economic principles in favor of investing for the maximum yield, costs my family dearly.

This is one of my pet peeves about current entrepreneurship programs now being offered in our own country. Many of the their teachings, fail to indoctrinate their students with the realistic values that were learned by our grandparents before. There are lessons that were learned during and after the Great Depression, that should not be forgotten. E.g.- For example, the important lesson of only investing your equities, (your interest bearing investments) in what your age dictates. If you are 81 years old, you should only invest 19% of your total assets in the stock market, and have 81% in fixed return instruments like bonds.

A relative lost a lot in the stock market because the banker, probably was more interested in getting their finders fee, and not investing according to the person's needs at their age, and failed to realize that investing in the stock market when the Dow was at an all time July 2007 high of 14,000 at the time. Their investment programs, were unable to keep them from being greedy and caused them to forget the above tried and true investment practices. Her personal computer at her desk, did not have any bells or whistles to tell her to use common sense, just a bunch of graphs to indicate what to do next.

How many 81 year old people do you know are able to go out and earn a living if they lose all of their savings in a serious economic downturn? The current crop of new and old entrepreneur students need to be reminded about business model realities; the world is not all "make a profit whatever the costs" or "Silicon Valley" incubator driven ventures, that make unrealistic profits when they start up.

Our past examples need to reflect these important tried and true lessons and not negate the lessons of the past. I do not buy the argument that times were different, before the advent of computers. Yes, in some ways that is true, but human nature has not changed and we need to learn from past financial fiascoes and downturns if we are to teach our future generations anything about innovation and business in the real world.

-Commenting on how much a company leverages itself out, when doing innovative work, I would like to have seen more written on that, and how debt to equity ratios of any company really do tell someone how healthy their company and ratings really are, rather than what their websites or publicity materials might be trying to convey. If your company's foundation and its ideas of innovation and intellectual property are built on concepts that are not sound, you can expect more of the same in the future is my point here.

-I wish the author's had talked more about the different kinds of translation software that is out there if you are going to be interacting with foreign countries in languages you don't speak. There are some good free translation internet services out there to use. The world is becoming a smaller place globally and if you are just starting to look into buying components abroad or outsourcing, this kind of skill set is one any innovator would want to use to avoid using to many middle man in buying parts abroad. E.g.-the Google translation function comes to mind here. Another important part of this is that I wish I had seen more information about how to scan, translate and read simultaneously what is on the internet. From what I can see, it can be done, yet I don't recall much mention of it in the textbook.

-There was little mention of touch screen pc tablet technology, probably because it is still in its infancy, (in my opinion) and it still has major problems to still overcome. Toshiba tried earlier to spearhead this market, and some of the problems encountered in handwriting recognition and touch screen technologies I believe have kept it from becoming the powerhouse in laptop technology it was suppose to have been.

-I would have liked to have heard more or found a complete list at the end of the book or a website list that stated which industries in dealing with innovation are currently the leaders in each country world wide and how long this trend has been going on? I wish more information had been given on how to go look up what different country's are strongest in, particularly pertaining to their area's of innovation and intellectual property, and in their outsourcing capabilities. Telling someone how to contact a consular general at an embassy and requesting information about different companies that their countries think they are a good fit for or what they are strongest in, would be a nice section to have seen on the chapter about outsourcing and in sourcing. It is an area I plan to read up on this summer.

-I perhaps have not looked hard enough in the text book, but I would like to have found a direct email to both authors or their secretaries to communicate these suggestions to them. I am sorry, but I am always suspect when academics don't make themselves easily accessible to their readers. I recently sent out a mailing to 70 billionaires, and you'd be surprised how many responded to my requests through their lead secretary. People who live in inaccessible ivory towers, aren't always in touch with what is currently going on at the local level on some key issues. The recent Wall Street failures and such should have taught us that. It is important that as they said in a Southwest Airline newsletter the authors "don't forget who brung ya to the dance."

There were a couple of times I and my teacher differed on some of the work I turned in. It would have been nice to have known I could have asked the author's what they really wanted on a few of the questions they asked of their readers at the end of a chapter or two.

-I would like to have seen the author's deal squarely with the topics of government subsidizing certain industries and why those industries might be falsely perceived to be "go go industries". E.g.-Japan's electronic industry, China's construction industry, Denmark's wind generation industry, Russia's petroleum industry. (Russian oil reserves are now the largest stockpiles in the world. I am not certain the textbook mentioned that.) Some mention of how alternative ethanol sources can suffer when the price of oil goes down, I hope will be realistically discussed in this their next edition of this textbook, and how seasonal changes and wars can also effect such things as well.

I hope a future edition of this textbook will reflect on and now address how dire the situation is for the Japanese economy now that the world has cut back considerably on buying Japanese electronics and their components. My point is being highly innovative, at the top of your intellectual property game is noteworthy, but if your now selling a "mouse trap" that no one is currently buying, what action or contingency plan should you consider doing next? This is a topic I hope the authors will address in their next edition.

Future innovators need to seriously consider this line of questioning in their business plans. This topic was very briefly mentioned. I honestly believe the authors deserve to give it more time and discussion, than just a passing mention. To not do so, is like being an ostrich with your head in the sand and not noticing which way the winds of change are blowing in.

-I found no mention of [...] and how it will do internet international medical database searches for its ailing and dying clients, when there are no known specialist in a particular region. This kind of medical service and database service is innovative and regrettably was overlooked.

-I would like the next edition of this book to squarely address how a country's general population can and has been deceived historically in the past into thinking everything economically is fine, when point in fact, companies like Morgan Stanley are responsible for having speculatively driven up the price on something like the price of a barrel of oil, because it was over speculated on the commodities market. In a 60 Minutes interview, circa 2008 or 2009, the head of the New York Mercantile Exchange stated how pre 2008, only 5% of all the oil traded being traded by them actually was being bought and sold for its use. The remaining 95% was all speculative oil trading on the commodities market.

-I would like the authors in the next edition to point out how the world of derivatives, while being innovative, is so complex that it has bankrupted dozens of companies and economies, because of its deceptive practices. The 2009 network interview on one of our country's 3 major networks, with one of the top two CEO leading bankers of Canada, summed up brilliantly, (and simply), why few (if any) Canadian banks have gone bankrupt by investing in derivatives or questionable real estate deals, that had people over extended on their mortgages. "If I read a investment instruments specifics, and I can't understand it, we just don't invest any of our monies there." The author of the book entitled Fiasco, who was interviewed by Teri Gross on NPR.com's program "Fresh Air" reemphasized this point, by what he told Ms. Gross when she asked "Where do the derivatives traders invest their massive incomes they earned from selling derivatives?" Answer; "they all put their money in US Treasury bonds." Need I say more.

-I know an acquaintance who has three factories worldwide that make parts for Mercedes Benz. One in China, Hungary and the United States. He told me something about his plant in China, that I have heard from other factory owners elsewhere. In his China operation, 25% to 27% of everything his factory makes for Mercedes Benz cars, goes directly to their landfills. There is that much waste, inefficiency and poor quality production that goes on in his China plant. He said if he could shut down his China plant tomorrow he would not hesitate to do it, because of all the headaches that production operation causes him in rejected and substandard made parts it produces. So why do you keep it open I asked him. "For all the headaches and junk that comes out of that manufacturing plant, the cheap costs of their labor is the only thing that still makes it a money maker."

I would like to have seen a section that discusses this issue, instead of the constant drumbeat we hear about how the Chinese manufacturing base is better than the United States or European manufacturing base. I repeatedly have heard of badly made parts being shipped over to United States furniture companies in container loads, when I worked in two USA furniture plants. Our furniture companies had to have those parts remade back in China to fill their parts orders, and that messed with their production schedules. I would like to see a list of countries who while they are industrial outsourcing giants, have to often scrap much of what they make because its quality is inferior to what was ordered in the first place. The leading writer on the furniture trade in High Point, North Carolina for their yearly International Home Furnishings Market mentioned how this was often the case if you did not go over and personally inspect what you ordered from China and see what was being put into the outgoing shipping container.

-I plan to read up more on patent law in this country and abroad. I would have liked the authors to have emphasized how small start ups can save a lot of money by doing their own patent searches, after taking classes offered for example by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Some references to how to learn to do that would have been helpful. They might have been mentioned, but I don't think they were.

-I hope the authors of the next edition of this book will contact the University of Miami, in Miami, Florida and report on how a giant underwater turbine is now being beta tested in the Gulf Stream to see if it is profitable and efficient way of generating a new way extracting energy from our oceans going currents.

I look forward to reading other constructive critiques and reviews of this textbook. It is well written and I hope to use what I have learned from this textbook for my business needs in the future.

Last point; If I were going to redesign the textbook I would make it so it could be disassembled and put in a three ring binder to keep ones notes in sequence with the lesson plan. Or have it bound in a spiral bound manner to make holding it in one hand while you are reading it, possible.

Thank you for reading this review and commenting on it if you have the chance. To the author's John and Joe, you wrote a darn good textbook on innovation and for that I am grateful. Just please "don't forget, who brung ya to the dance" in your next revision of this wonderful textbook. We readers, have more to say, than sometimes you give us credit for, so include how we contact you directly in your next text book revision, OK? You might be pleasantly surprised just how innovative some of our ideas about your upcoming text book revision are. Thanks.

Kindest Regards,
Compulsively Yours,

Adam Thomson
Online "Innovation & Creativity Class" Graduate
Haywood Community College, (USA)

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