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Week of June 26 - July 2, 2006

Welcome to the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship, an initiative of the Public Forum Institute made possible by a grant from the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City. Through NDE-news, we bring you short summaries and analyses of various trends driving the innovation economy. Subscribe now to receive your weekly copy. Archived issues are available online. Links to the day's entrepreneurship stories from across the nation and around the world are posted each weekday on the NDE main page - bookmark it and stay informed about the latest entrepreneurship news.

Welcome to the NDE-news Summer Books Issue. Below we have listed new and notable books for those with an interest in the entrepreneurial economy. All listed titles should be readily available at your favorite neighborhood or on-line book retailers.

Suzanne Berger, How We Compete: What Companies Around the World are Doing to Make It in Today’s Global Economy (Currency, 2005).

Berger is an MIT professor, and her book reports on a massive five-year study undertaken by MIT’s Industrial Performance Center. Assessing 500 global corporations, the researchers sought to identify effective and ineffective strategies for competing in the global economy. Thanks to globalization, corporations face two big challenges: reorganization and relocation. How should structure themselves and where should they do business? There is no single right solution. The book also contains numerous insights related to the debate over outsourcing. The researchers note that cheap labor is not enough. Thus, outsourcing solely to reduce costs will not create a globally competitive firm.

Bo Burlingham, Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big. (Portfolio, 2005).

Burlingham is a long-editor at Inc. Magazine who has been in the trenches of the entrepreneurial revolution for years. His latest book looks at some exceptional small companies like Anchor Brewing Co., Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records, and Zingerman’s. All of these firms, and their owners, have opted to remain small instead of pursuing massive growth. By focusing on excellence, they are able to build strong businesses and pursue other more community-oriented goals for their businesses.

Michael D’Antonio, Hershey: Milton S. Hershey’s Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams. (Simon & Schuster, 2006).

We always like to include at least one history book in each edition of E-News book recommendations. This year’s selection focuses on Milton S. Hershey, of Hershey’s candy bar fame. Hershey’s story is a fascinating one. A self-made man, Hershey went on to create one of the greatest business stories of the 20th century. But, Hershey was not just a great entrepreneur. He also tried to use his business as a means to support social causes such as aiding orphans and building a model community in his hometown of Hershey, Pennsylvania. This is a well-written book that provides a comprehensive look at Hershey’s business, social, and professional life.

Samuel Fromartz, Organic Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew. (Harcourt, 2006).

Natural food companies, like Tom’s of Maine and Whole Foods Markets, have been some of the most interesting and innovative entrepreneurial success stories of the past decade. Fromartz profiles the growth of these industry pioneers, and also examines where the organic food industry is heading today. This is a good readable depiction of an important emerging industry.

Julie Silard Kantor, I Said Yes! Real Life Stories of Students, Teachers and Leaders Saying Yes! to Youth Entrepreneurship in America’s Schools (Gazelles, Inc., 2006).

If you want to feel good about the power of youth entrepreneurship, this is the book for you. Kantor is a long time leader at the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), one of the nation’s leading providers of youth entrepreneurship training. I Said Yes! tells her story as well as the stories of dozens of young people who have raised themselves up through their involvement in NFTE and through their decisions to live the entrepreneurial life.

Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton University Press, 2006).

If asked to list the most important inventions of the 20th century, few people would list the lowly shipping container. But, The Box makes a strong case for reconsidering that list. Levinson tells the story of Malcolm McLean, an entrepreneur who was looking for a better way to ship and distribute goods. Beginning in 1956, he pioneered the use of shipping containers. It wasn’t easy as longshoremen’s unions and other opposed this innovation. But, the impact has been profound. The use of shipping containers helped contribute to the decline of older seaports and the rise of Asia as a dominant producer of cheap domestic goods. As such, we can tag containers as one keep driving force in the globalization of world markets.

Paul Ormerod, Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics. (Pantheon, 2006).

As the title notes, most things do fail yet most of our thinking and economic theory tend to focus on successes. Ormerod contends that failure is a hallmark of all life and that it is “the distinguishing feature of corporate life.” Yet, for Ormerod, failure is not necessarily a bad thing and is actually a spur to learning and growth. By testing new ideas, managing uncertainty, and taking risks, businesses can innovate and prosper. The secret is not to avoid failure, but to develop methods for learning from failure. Ormerod’s book attempts to provide some tools for such learning.

Anna Lee Saxenian, The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy (Harvard University Press, 2006).

Saxenian made a name for herself with Regional Advantage (1996), a book that attributed Silicon Valley’s success to a local business culture that valued collaboration, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Her new book takes a more global perspective. In Saxenian’s parlance, the new argonauts refer to high tech entrepreneurs and technologists who commute around the globe to build and grow new ventures. The Indian IT executive who operates in both California and India would be a classic “new argonaut.” She argues that the concept of brain drain should be replaced by “brain circulation.” As new argonauts move around the globe, they bring development and innovation to both the US and to their home countries.

Neal Thornberry, Lead Like an Entrepreneur: Keeping the Entrepreneurial Spirit Alive within the Corporation, (McGraw Hill, 2006).

Entrepreneurs have a lot to teach their brethren working in large corporate settings. Thornberry’s book is targeted to corporate executives who are seeking ways to overcome organizational sluggishness that may often creep into large established organizations. He identifies a range of entrepreneurial leadership types, like the explorer (who seeks to develop new products and services) and the accelerator who constantly challenges colleagues to think and act in a more innovative fashion. Thornberry then offers tips—based on real-life examples---of how these leadership traits can be imported into large corporate settings.

David Warsh, Knowledge and the Competitive Advantage of Nations: A Story of Economic Discovery. (W.W. Norton, 2006).

When you learn that this book tells the story of new growth theory, you’ll probably check it off of your summer reading list. That would be a mistake because Warsh, a former Boston Globe columnist, tells a good story here. Warsh describes the emergence of a new set of economic ideas (new growth theory) that help explain economic growth by focusing on new ideas, innovation, and entrepreneurship. If you want a readable introduction to recent economic debates about national and international competitiveness, this is a good book for you.

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