4/17/2012 7:45:00 AM Text Review A summary of the most critical elements of the book (30%); this should include

the credentials of the author for writing the book, and may include reports of how the book influenced others. The author of this book Dr. Kathleen R Allen has written more than fifteen books based on entrepreneurship, new technology commercializations and books on innovations. Dr. Kathleen is an entrepreneur who owns and runs 4 companies in various fields of manufacturing, healthcare and real estates. A co founder of N2TEC, non-profit ventures which monitors and supports government entities in Rural America on how to develop new technology companies. She is the director of the University of Southern California Marshall Center for Technology Commercialization where she is also a professor of entrepreneurship. In that capacity she enjoys helping young entrepreneurs design and launch their businesses. She also consults to large companies on issues related to innovation and the commercialization of new technologies. One of the topics on which she is often called to speak on is how to use the entrepreneur's mindset and skills to manage a career. This book entrepreneurs for Scientist and Engineers addresses the unique needs of a person who considers entrepreneurship as a career path, whether it be by commercializing through a new company, a technology they have developed or going to work in an entrepreneurial venture. The book is divided into four different segments which guidelines the visionary reader about how to become an entrepreneur, what are all the opportunities, technology entrepreneurship strategy and how to finance for his own business and develop a business model. Every chapter ends with the small case based on the chapter readings. The case were mainly influenced from the chapter and it is an example which shows that how the companies adopt the business models and entrepreneurial ideas for their growth. On reading this book, I found many critical elements that needed to be mentioned in this review. The book starts of with how scientist and engineers behave in their entrepreneurial path. The first chapter addresses answers for Entrepreneurship and why it is to be studied. There are many young scientists and engineers with fresh ideas seeking to be an entrepreneur. It clearly states that scientists and engineers should read and understand what is entrepreneurship, which gives them an opportunity to tackle problems when they start their own venture. Innovation has been defined in different views and grouped them as sustaining and disruptive innovations. This chapter brief about the myths of early movers, early adopters, solo inventors and etc. Examples of Bill gates, Einstein and other such inventors who were influenced or helped by their friends, scientists shows how inventions have connections to ideas, which help develop a huge business conglomerate. The upcoming chapters showed more connectivity and was a guidance for a new entrepreneur who should know all the basic standards

like opportunity recognition, IP protection, product development and promotion, technology adoption cycle, developing a business model, financing their business and technology valuation. The critical element that I came across while reading this book were part 4: Start-up Financial Strategy, which focused on financial strategy by going deeper into business models, funding of technology start-ups, and funding growing technology companies. This part of the book gives great informations for entrepreneurs to know how they can manage the business, create wealth, attract investors for funding and value their company. The business model or plan is one of the important tasks that an entrepreneur needs to establish before venturing his business. The plan helps him to identify the technology products, market potential for the new product, to identify differentiation among competitors and a lot more aspects before launching a venture. The author has given more insights on components of business model, value chain proposition (an important marketing tool or strategy to develop a business), to identify sources of revenue, cost drivers, about how to launch a business model and how to tackle it if the model fails. Funding the technology start up is another interesting chapter, which summarizes the various sources of funding available to develop and expand the business. The chapter tells that Seed, early stage, and growth are the three important risk associated with the funding types. Not many entrepreneurs able to get the government funding. This chapter gives a glimpse about the sources of government funding, what seed capital is about and how angel investor help develop a business. Once the start up firm finishes its product development and its feasibility of business concepts, it has to look for investors who could provide money to envision the entrepreneurs dream. Angel investors are those people who come in after the friendly capital. They take a significant portion of equity and it helps the company under media attention and also attracts private equities and venture capitalists. Chapter 12, Funding growth discusses about the funding needed for growth. Here it summarizes about VC, private equity and Initial public offerings. The chapter gives info about how the venture capitalist scrutinize and look for opportunities of the product before investing in the company. They look for long-term investment but they have the majority stake and expect the return on investment at a shorter period. The chapter stresses the importance of raising money through public offerings and private equities. It is very important for the entrepreneur to have a perfect plan and should know how to utilize the money. Both VC and private offerings look for top five factors before investing in the company. They are leadership potential, management team, industry expertise people, and track record of the entrepreneur and management team. By going public, that is IPO helps the company to raise additional money in the secondary market and there are certain sacrifices and issues need to be face under the SEC rules. In chapter 13, it helps us to know the important methods for making valuation for the company. Valuation is one of the important analyses, which helps to know about the wealth and market price of the

company. Most of the investors tend to know about the worth of the company before investing in any firm. This chapter describes four financial valuation models that are widely used to calculate the worth of the company. The chapter lists out the reason that trigger a valuation that includes raising seed capital for product development, raising startup capital to launch a business, raising growth capital to expand business, selling technology and selling rights to develop, manufacture and distribute technology. The book influenced most of the case at the end of the chapter. I chapter 2, the case Art of Invention shows how Dr. Yoshiro recognized and utilized the technology opportunity Most of his inventions were from real life. The case puts points on saying how Dr. Yoshiro developed his innovation techniques right from his childhood and how he created the opportunity to be unique form other scientists. This shows that how an entrepreneur should recognize the opportunity and tap the market that no one has touched. The other case Alibaba that explains how he was able to source funds from investors and envisioned his ream of being a e commerce company. He made partnership with some companies that added advantage to attract investors like Goldman Sachs and Softbank. From riches to rags and Back, Quantum dot etc are the reports which shows the examples of how this books principles are adopted in developing the ones own vision. An analysis of the content of the book relevant to the course material (60%). For example, how do the textbook and additional book compare and contrast, how do they relate to class lectures, to the networking events you attend, to the insights of guest speakers? Most of the contents of the book relates to the class lectures and its syllabus. In class I came across a lecture on how to build a business plan. The contents of this book showed various examples and summarized techniques and strategies on how effectively to build a business model. For example, chapter 10 recalls that how entrepreneurs should develop a business model before launching venture. The function of the business model is innovation with new ideas, invasion, new technologies and strategic values to attract the customer. The entrepreneur should be able to position his product in the market by analyzing the value chain. One of the key aspects of business plan is to identify sources of revenue. This chapter clearly indicates that how an entrepreneur can approach or attract investors to fund his project and march towards growth strategy. How to finance start-ups is one of the core objectives of the ETR and Professor discussed about the angel investors, VCs and other offerings on how to attract them. The lecture on these topics gave insights on how to arrange our own finance for our business development. The book holds gives deep thoughts on these private and public offerings, how to initially approach VCs, what these firms expect from the entrepreneur and advantages of their investing. It was of great help in understanding the expectation of these venture firms and private and

public offerings. These book readings gave deeper analysis of class lectures on these topics. Another class lecture was on how to recognize opportunities. Recognizing opportunities and tapping the market is one of the key factors that an entrepreneur must know. I could remember Professor showing picture slides in class about the various opportunities that people created and achieved niche. Business plan videos, opportunity markets, technology identification, technology adoption were some of the key concepts discussed in class. All these lectures were discussed in the book in various chapters. Chapter 2 and 3 discussed about how to recognize and screen opportunities and how to design and start technology start up. The contents gave various insights on screening technology opportunities, IP rights, infringing, patents, and etc that will help entrepreneurs to tackle the problems they face in running the business. Industry analysis, market analysis, evaluation, customer analysis and forecasting demand are some of the serious topics that one should read and get to understand the underlying facts of entrepreneurial journey. The content of the book had some relation to the networking event and insights of the guest speakers that I attended and listened. Very recently I happen to sit on the inauguration for years first WPI venture forum. This event had two-keynote speaker s who gave presentation on new innovation and how social networks help promote new business and create entrepreneurs. The two speakers were Scott Kirsner, longtime technology reporter and Innovation Economy columnist for the Sunday Boston Globe and Social media forecaster Patrick OMalley. Since the networking event was about innovation and entrepreneurial development, the content of the book had a deep relation to it. The book summarized how new invention is very important to create a successful business. The guest speaker Scott Kirsner showed various new examples and pictures of new invention like, wireless electricity, etc were amazing and the book also stresses the importance of invention and how to adopt the right technology at right time. Chapter 9 Technology adoption and marketing strategy explored the nature of high technology market and effective ways to create awareness about the new technology to the customer to build a mutual relationship in promoting the business. Scott Kirsner speech was mostly on innovation and how to adopt or utilize the fast moving technology into the business vision to become an entrepreneur. Another speaker, Patrick stressed on creating new opportunities and how to promote new business via social media. The content of book showcased various cases related to his speech on how to use Internet as an efficient tool to grow business. One case I found interesting was Alibaba case, where the entrepreneur moves from china to US and learns about Internet to grow his business rapidly. Patricks speech was on Future of social media for business: How social media affects small, large, national, local business. Demonstrated how it works in the business environment of today and some steps to incorporate them in our way. The content of the book also related in saying how to promote and market the product to the customer. It has to somehow attract the customers and for that social media and Internet can play a stepping-stone for young

and startup firm entrepreneurs. Chapter 9 can be one of the examples of Patrick speech. He explained about promoting the business and in other means we call it as marketing. The chapter gives insights on marketing strategies and throws that customer centered marketing is the focus of start up entrepreneurs and new ventures. One should know- how to promote the business and this will help to create a niche market. An example from guest speaker about Asian women Michelle Phan with her brilliant presentation skills regarding Asian make up was able to attract more customers via social media, an important marketing tool in recent years. So the content of the book and insights of guest speakers were related in aspects of technology, commercialization, promotion, innovation, opportunities and branding. Networking is very important for any young entrepreneur. He should develop more friends through networking which helps to grow contacts and portray his visibility of his venture to wider horizons of people. An expression of opinion regarding the readability of the book and the contribution it makes or does not make to your knowledge of entrepreneurship (10%). Do you feel it will add to your success in business or life, and if so, how? The reading of a book gave me a deeper knowledge on how should an entrepreneur look for opportunities and attract investors to grow his business at a rapid pace. This book reading made me clear in all aspects of the entrepreneurial venture like creating and have a perfect business model (strong tool for attracting angel investors), technology transfer, different marketing strategies that should be adopted, problems based on IP and etc are a basic knowledge that one should have when he thinks of transforming himself to an entrepreneur. I was able to know what are all the factors that an entrepreneur would need to know and do for expanding his visions. This reading definitely adds value to my business and life in future, because I am one, who is expecting to join my family business at some time after receiving the degree. My family business was started and being operated by first generation entrepreneurs (my father and his brother). As a second generation, I have lost of responsibilities to undertake and this book gave me lot of ideas on how an entrepreneur should envision his ideas, create wealth, expand business, scout funding opportunities, protect IP rights of the technology and assets, look for opportunities and analyze the market before launching any product. An entrepreneur for scientists and engineers by Kathleen R Allen was a perfect guide and a learning tool for me to horn my entrepreneurial skill for my business development in future and life.