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Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures cover

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Business

Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures

Bruce R. Barringer; R. Duane Ireland

An entrepreneurship textbook that follows the process of starting a new business from the decision to become an entrepreneur to managing and growing the firm. Each stage, from recognising opportunities and testing feasibility to building a team, raising finance and protecting intellectual property, is explained with frameworks, profiles of young firms and case studies.

Prerequisites: No prior business study is required, though an introductory course in management, marketing or accounting helps with the later chapters.

Difficulty Level
Intermediate
Academic Level
Undergraduate
entrepreneurshipnew venturesbusiness planninginnovationTextbook

01 / Reading Guide

Reading Guide

Citation

Barringer, B. R., & Ireland, R. D. (2024). Entrepreneurship: Successfully Launching New Ventures (7th ed., Global ed.). Pearson.

Chapter Summary

The publisher's contents list fifteen chapter titles in four parts, followed by a glossary and name, company and subject indexes. Pearson describes the book as teaching readers to launch and grow a company through a clear four-step process, using profiles of young entrepreneurs, and as identifying failures as well as successes. The four parts follow the life of a venture from the decision to start through to growth.

Part 1, Decision to Become an Entrepreneur: Introduction to Entrepreneurship

The book opens with a single chapter on the decision to become an entrepreneur. It is the only chapter in its part.

Part 2, Developing Successful Business Ideas

Part 2 has five chapters: Recognizing Opportunities and Generating Ideas; Feasibility Analysis; Developing an Effective Business Model; Industry and Competitor Analysis; and Writing a Business Plan. The order is worth noting. Ideas come first, then a test of feasibility, then the business model, then the industry and competitors, and the business plan comes last, as a document that pulls the earlier work together.

Part 3, Moving from an Idea to an Entrepreneurial Firm

Part 3 turns to the practicalities of setting up the firm in four chapters: Preparing the Proper Ethical and Legal Foundation; Assessing a New Venture's Financial Strength and Viability; Building a New-Venture Team; and Getting Financing or Funding. The part puts ethical and legal groundwork first, then financial viability, then people, then money.

Part 4, Managing and Growing an Entrepreneurial Firm

The final part has five chapters: Unique Marketing Issues; The Importance of Intellectual Property; Preparing for and Evaluating the Challenges of Growth; Strategies for Firm Growth; and Franchising. Marketing and intellectual property are treated as issues of an operating new firm, followed by three chapters on growth, with franchising closing the book.

Key Concepts

Part 1 and Part 2: The Idea

  • Opportunity recognition and idea generation: the subject of the first chapter in Part 2.
  • Feasibility analysis: testing an idea before committing to it.
  • Business model: the chapter on developing an effective business model.
  • Industry and competitor analysis: placing the venture in its market.
  • Business plan: the written plan that closes Part 2.

Part 3 and Part 4: The Firm and Its Growth

  • Ethical and legal foundation: set out before the firm is built.
  • Financial strength and viability: assessing whether a venture can be sustained.
  • New-venture team: building the people side of the firm.
  • Financing or funding: the final chapter of Part 3.
  • Intellectual property: given a chapter of its own.
  • Growth strategies and franchising: the book's final topics.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

  • A process structure that mirrors a venture. The four parts follow the sequence a founder meets, from deciding to start to growing the firm, so the book can be used alongside a real project.
  • Planning tools get distinct chapters. Feasibility analysis, the business model, industry and competitor analysis and the business plan each have a separate chapter, which makes it easier to see how each tool differs.
  • Practical coverage of firm set-up. Ethics, law, financial viability, team building and funding are all treated before the growth chapters, rather than assumed.
  • Examples and honesty about failure. Pearson says the text uses profiles of young entrepreneurs and highlights failures as well as successes, and that the seventh edition adds experiences and insights from entrepreneurs, publications, blogs and podcasts.

Limitations

  • Narrower on innovation theory. The contents focus on launching and growing a single firm and do not include chapters on innovation theory or the study of entrepreneurship as a research field.
  • One chapter on the entrepreneurial mindset. The decision to become an entrepreneur is covered in a single introductory chapter, so readers wanting a deeper treatment of the mindset or of creativity must look elsewhere.
  • Heavy dependence on current examples. The publisher stresses recent profiles and sources; such material dates quickly, so company stories are best treated as illustrations of the frameworks.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is a full course text on launching a venture, in a list that also includes shorter and more specialised books. Laverty and Littel's OpenStax Entrepreneurship is a free introductory text that moves from the entrepreneurial mindset and opportunity recognition through creativity, marketing, finance, legal structure and resource planning, and is the gentler starting point. Ries's The Lean Startup is a practitioner's account of testing product ideas quickly with customers and works well beside the feasibility and business model chapters.

Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma is a study of why well-managed established companies lose their position when disruptive technologies change competition, so it speaks to a different question from how to start a firm. Shane's A General Theory of Entrepreneurship is a research monograph on the link between individuals and opportunities, and Tidd and Bessant's Managing Innovation is a research-based textbook on innovation in organisations. Both are better read after a course text such as this one.

How to Use This Book

The book suits undergraduates taking a first full course in entrepreneurship or new venture creation, in business or other programmes, and students developing their own idea. The publisher's materials give no prerequisite beyond general study; an introductory course in management, marketing or accounting will help in the later chapters.

A practical plan:

  • Core: Read Part 1 and Part 2 in order and apply each chapter to a venture idea of your own.
  • Planning documents: Treat the feasibility analysis and the business model chapters as working tools, and write the business plan last.
  • Setting up: Read Part 3 once a concept has survived feasibility, using the financial viability and funding chapters to test your numbers.
  • Growth: Read Part 4 selectively. The chapters on growth and franchising are most useful once a firm is operating or close to it.