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The Systematic Search for Entrepreneurial Discoveries
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James O. Fiet
Foreword by Jay B. Barney
Book Code: Q255
ISBN: 1-56720-255-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-56720-255-7
256 pages, figures, tables
Quorum Books
Publication: 7/30/2002
List Price: $102.95 (UK Sterling Price: £59.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Related Web Pages:
  • Endorsement From Per Davidsson
    The Jönköping International Business School, Sweden:     Many entrepreneurs fail. Among the successful ones, the success is sometimes due to luck. For these reasons, sound advice to aspiring entrepreneurs cannot be based solely on descriptions of what practicing entrepreneurs do. Based on this insight, Fiet takes on the task of developing instead theory about what entrepreneurs should do. The result is an important book with potential for widespread classroom use--and possibly for re-directing the focus of entrepreneurship research.
  • Endorsement From Dean A. Shepherd
    Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado:     A comprehensive, logical, and empirical argument that represents an important contribution to the advancement of entrepreneurship. The field of entrepreneurship will benefit greatly from this book.
  • Endorsement From Howard E. Aldrich
    Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina:     Fiet has laid down a challenge to the traditional way entrepreneurship scholars teach and do research. Through a very ingenious experiment, Fiet demonstrates that his method can really improve the discovery process for prospective entrepreneurs. If implemented, Fiet's new strategy would revolutionize entrepreneurship courses and perhaps revitalize curricula that depend too heavily on anecdotal reports from the field and borrowed principles from other disciplines.
  • Endorsement From Lowell W. Busenitz
    Price College of Business, The University of Oklahoma:     Blazes a new trail for understanding the discovery process. This book will be of interest to all researchers, teachers, and practitioners interested in better understanding how entrepreneurs successfully search for new information that leads to new business opportunities.
Description: Entrepreneurs do much more than manage small businesses. At the heart of entrepreneurship is the discovery process. An idea is conceived and then exploited for profit. But if the idea is neither useful nor unique, its exploitation will generate only average profits. Therefore, the idea and the process that leads to its discovery are of the utmost importance to the success of any new venture. Can the discovery process be taught, or must one be born with the talent to unearth promising opportunities? Fiet argues that entrepreneurial discovery can indeed be taught, and he proposes a theory of the informational elements that constitute the discovery process. Entrepreneurship as an academic discipline has often been criticized for lacking intellectual rigor and a theoretical foundation. Fiet supplies both in this scholarly book, which approaches entrepreneurial competence from an academic perspective. There are three primary characteristics of entrepreneurial competence: tacit knowledge of an entrepreneur's field of endeavor, which can be improved by trial and error; the knowledge of decision rules that enable one to make rational informational investments based upon the signals of opportunities; and the unequal distribution of entrpreneurial competence among the population. Recognizing that entrepreneurs start out at different stages of competence, Fiet asserts that anyone cam improve using his book as a pedagogical aid. This volume fills a void in the entrepreneurship literature, which too often is indistinguishable from that which informs courses on small business management.
Table of Contents:
  • The Essential Role of Discovery in Entrepreneurship
  • Toward a Theory of Entrepreneurship
  • The Informational Economics of Discovery
  • The Impact of Competitive Structure on Discovery
  • Entrepreneurial Competence as Knowledge
  • Deciding How Entrepreneurs Can Search for Discoveries
  • Discovery as Either the Result of Accidental Alertness or Systematic Search
  • The Promise of Systematic Search for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
  • The Pedagogy of Entrepreneurship Theory
  • Opportunities for Future Research
  • Index
LC Card Number: 2001057865
LCC Class: HB615
Dewey Class: 658
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