In The Unicorn's Shadow, Wharton School professor Ethan Mollick takes us to the forefront of an empirical revolution in entrepreneurship. New data and better research methods have overturned the conventional wisdom behind what a successful founder looks like, how they succeed, and how the startup ecosystem works.
Ethan Mollick is an associate professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship, with a special emphasis on how to give everyone more opportunities to be innovative and entrepreneurial. His papers have been published in top management journals and have won multiple awards. His work on crowdfunding is the most cited article in management published in the last five years. Prior to his time in academia, he cofounded a startup company, and he currently advises a number of startups and organizations. As the academic director and co-founder of Wharton Interactive, he is working to transform entrepreneurship education using games and simulations. He has had a long interest in using games for teaching, and coauthored a book on the intersection between video games and business that was named one of the American Library Association's top 10 business books of the year. He has built numerous teaching games, used by tens of thousands of students around the world. Mollick received his PhD and MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management and his bachelor's degree from Harvard University, magna cum laude.
"Not every successful startup was created by a hoodie-wearing
genius spending long nights working out of his garage, argues
Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton
School who specializes in innovation and entrepreneurship . . . .
By examining a wealth of evidence and academic studies, the author
moves beyond jargon and accepted wisdom to highlight the issues
that startup founders need to consider and the obstacles they may
have to overcome. For example, he illustrates why having a youthful
founder can sometimes hinder, rather than help, a company's chances
at success; puts paid to the notion that there's one specific
entrepreneurial personality type; shows why chasing venture capital
cash may not be the right choice for every startup; and explains
how a company's culture can be set (for better or for worse) in its
earliest days. Along the way, he offers concrete, evidence-based
advice that will help would-be founders achieve their goals.
There's useful information here for readers at all stages of the
startup journey, including those who are struggling to find an 'it'
idea that will wow both customers and investors. Mollick includes a
nuanced dissection of the idea- generation process, showing how to
come up with business concepts by looking at 'the means at their
disposal'—what knowledge or connections they already have—rather
than focusing on where they want to end up. Readers will come away
with a better understanding of startup myths as well as a framework
that they can use to "match the expectations of the monomyth where
you can, while pushing the boundaries in areas that matter to you .
. . . Convincingly punctures some pervasive misconceptions about
startup success."
*Kirkus Reviews*
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