Home Page > Share your BrainFood > Help write a textbook > Suggested Table of Contents

Suggested Table of Contents

Outlined below is a Table of Contents for an entrepreneurship textbook we propose to publish. It has been cobbled together from suggestions received to date. Your content contributions in the form materials you've created would be most helpful in our effort to produce a worthy textbook that can be sold for under twenty-dollars (about one tenth of what today's textbooks sell for). Just use the form below to send us your ideas. (You'll be surprised by how much that teeny box holds!) You can also e-mail your electronic files directly to Info@BrainFoodToGo.com

Articles, PowerPoint^TM presentations, audios, videos, or similar materials relating to any of the topics below would be gratefully accepted and also made available on this web portal for use by teachers and students around the world --- free of charge! If you wish, your published contribution will include your name and affiliation along with an e-mail address or URL. Applicable copyright protections will be appropriately noted. You can check out the Terms of Use that guide all submissions. 

Please share your experience with us. In the words of Albert Einstein: "Experience is the only source of knowledge."  

ALTERNATIVE OUTLINE

• Definition of an entrepreneur
• Evolution of the entrepreneur
• Types of entrepreneurs
• Denoting the difference between entrepreneurs and small business owners
• Social entrepreneurship
• Intrapreneurship
• Relationship between entrepreneurship and innovation
• The process of innovation
• Types of innovation
• Facilitators of innovation
• Characteristics of the innovator
• Rules for innovative (creative) behavior
• Types of companies typically started
• The importance of entrepreneurship
• Contributions of entrepreneurs

• Characteristics of entrepreneurs
• Determining if you have what it takes
• Testing your entrepreneurial proclivities
• The motivations of an entrepreneur
• The entrepreneurial decision
• The background of an entrepreneur
• Are entrepreneurs born or made?
• The gender or an entrepreneur
• What it takes to be an entrepreneur
• What is needed to be an entrepreneur
• Factors that contribute to entrepreneurial success

• Finding opportunities
• Determining the unduplicated value or utility you will be providing
• Distinguishing your product/service
• Establishing your product/service line
• Formulating your business model
• Top line
• Validating your anticipated revenue stream
• Bottom line
• Margin
• In-between lines
• Identifying your potential customers
• Quantifying anticipated demand
• Determining their wants and needs
• Verifying their capacity and proclivity to purchase
• Developing approaches to your target markets
• Assessing your competition
• Making the numbers work - Number Gumbo
• Figuring out how to put it together
• Creating a business plan
• Identifying and mobilizing the needed resources
• Specifying plant and equipment needs
• Projecting your cash requirements
• Screening vendors
• Formulating make or buy decisions
• Organizing
• Organizational structures
• Franchise alternatives
• Building a team
• Hiring the first employee
• Raising the capital
• Bankrolling the operation 
• Banks
• Investors
• Angels
• Venture capital providers
• The public
• Other lenders
• Doing a final self-check

• Marketing
• Creating a theme or personality
• Selecting marketing methodologies
• Determining sales and distribution channels
• Virtual outlets 
• Promoting
• Advertising
• Establishing prices
• Building a sales team
• Motivating sales personnel
• Maintaining customer relationships    
• Controlling the finances
• Cost analysis and control
• Running the cash
• Monitoring
• Establishing "key numbers"
• Running ratios
• Controlling debt
• Directing operations
• Planning and scheduling
• Ensuring product safety
• Establishing a report structure
• Interacting with your collaborators
• Team members
• Investors
• Lenders
• Spouse or significant other
• Motivating a team
• Creating entrepreneurs & intrapreneurs
• Compensating
• Sharing ownership
• Nurturing a safe, positive workplace 
• Dealing with competition
• Managing risk
• Assessing it
• Accepting it
• Preventing it
• Dealing with negative outcomes
• Precluding loss
• Using insurance
• Innovating and changing 
• Creative destruction - Perpetually recreating the business
• The nature of creativity
• Employing your creativity 
• Idea generating techniques for opportunity exploitation and problem resolution
• Ensuring an innovative environment
• The Environmental Audit        
• Protecting intellectual property
• Managing licenses
• Managing time
• Bargaining and negotiating
• Getting help
• Dealing with failure
• Learning the warning signs
• Taking immediate action
• Dealing with the impact of the external environment
• "The Theory of Events"

• Valuing the enterprise
• Dealing with family
• Succession
• Preparing for the “if”
• Selling the enterprise