Dear ENT colleagues
Please have a look at our new book: Where to play: 3 steps for discovering your most valuable market opportunities. (Gruber & Tal, FT/Pearson, 2017).
This book is targeted at entrepreneurs and innovators, who seek to better understand how to get the most value from their innovation by identifying, evaluating and smartly strategizing their market opportunities.
It thus addresses crucial issues that add value to commonly used business tools such as the Business Model Canvas or Lean Start-up. In an easy-to-apply format it guides the reader through a creative and analytic process.
The book is available via selected channels (including Amazon, where it is currently selling with a significant launch discount).
Below you will find a brief description of the book, recommendations from notable scholars, and the table of contents.
Thanks for sharing and warm regards,
Marc Gruber & Sharon Tal
More information about the book, incl. worksheets (for free download): www.wheretoplay.co
Enquiries (e.g., email us for a free sample chapter, or free PPTs for instructors): marc.gruber@epfl.ch, iesharon@technion.ac.il
Description of the book (from the back cover):
As an entrepreneur or innovator, you're trained to run fast. But are you running in the right direction?
Choosing the right market for your innovation is the biggest, and trickiest, question for innovators. Research has shown that all too often entrepreneurs don't spend enough time identifying and researching their market opportunities. Instead they jump at the first opportunity that looks good, and fail to properly evaluate and leverage other options. This common mistake means that you often choose the wrong market or lock yourself into one specific direction.
Where to Play helps you to set a promising strategy, by giving a clear, structured and practical framework - the Market Opportunity Navigator- to better identify, evaluate and focus on the right market opportunities. With three dedicated and reusable worksheets covering:
· Market Opportunity Set – assess your core strengths and identify which market opportunities exist for your business
· Attractiveness Map – evaluate your market opportunities to reveal the most attractive option for focus
· Agile Focus Strategy – create a strategic plan for your chosen market opportunity that keeps you open-minded and agile
The book is easy to understand and to apply. Rooted in decade-long research, though, it demonstrates an acute awareness of the subtleties of strategy generation.
Recommendations
"Designed to work seamlessly with our Business Model and Value Proposition Canvases, the Market Opportunity Navigator, proposed by Marc and Sharon, will help entrepreneurs and innovators to commercialize technologies. You will enjoy discovering highly practical worksheets, maps and dartboards of tremendous interest if you want to better identify, evaluate and strategize market opportunities. Let yourself be charmed by the toolkit and the case studies, along with the thoughts of Marc and Sharon".
Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, authors of the bestseller Business Model Generation
"When two internationally-known experts in entrepreneurship write a "how to" book on market opportunities for entrepreneurs, it is bound to be a very valuable book indeed. Marc Gruber and Sharon Tal have created just the right book for first-time and experienced entrepreneurs. It contains both step-by-step plans and very valuable tips on identifying market opportunities - an invaluable complement to both the Lean Start-up Process and the Business Model Canvas!"
Eric von Hippel, T. Wilson Professor of Innovation, MIT Sloan School of Management
"From entrepreneurship thought leaders comes this innovative step-by-step guide to thinking through the market essentials of an opportunity. Rather than relying on generic examples or others' stories, the authors put the reader in the "driver's seat" by encouraging him or her to generate, evaluate, and prepare to act on their own opportunities. I can't think of a more practically useful entrepreneurship book."
Dean A. Shepherd, Ray and Milann Siegfried Professor of Entrepreneurship, Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame University
"Gruber and Tal have crafted a visually exciting way for entrepreneurs to identify and analyze their opportunities, before they dive into execution. This book pairs nicely with the Business Model Canvas and Lean Startup. Best of all, it also tells you how to focus, and what NOT to do!"
Henry Chesbrough, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business professor, and author of Open Innovation.
"Using thoughtful research and compelling examples, Where to Play provides important guidance on how to balance focus and flexibility when launching a new venture. It builds on the Lean Startup model by providing meaningful insights on what markets to address first. "
Tina Seelig, Professor of the Practice, Stanford School of Engineering
"The market opportunity navigator attacks head-on one of the most difficult questions any aspiring entrepreneur must answer: 'Which target market should I serve?' It's visual, easy-to-apply, and full of common-sense. If I were starting a business today, I wouldn't leave the starting blocks without it!"
Best-selling author and Professor John Mullins, London Business School: The New Business Road Test and The Customer-Funded Business
Table of contents
1) Overview
1.1 Introduction: Are you running in the right direction?
1.2 The Market Opportunity Navigator in a nutshell
2) The Market Opportunity Navigator: 3 steps for discovering your most valuable market opportunities
2.1 Market Opportunity Set
2.2 Attractiveness Map
2.3 Agile Focus Dartboard
3) Implications & Benefits
3.1 Implications of the Agile Focus Strategy
3.2 Ongoing benefits of the Market Opportunity Navigator
3.3 Using the Market Opportunity Navigator with other business tools
4) Beyond startups - The Navigator for:
4.1 Established firms
4.2 Investors
4.3 Technology Transfer Offices
4.4 Educators and Accelerators
5) Epilogue- the Navigator's Navigator
________________________________
Prof. Dr. Marc Gruber
Chair of Entrepreneurship & Technology Commercialization EPFL
Deputy Editor Academy of Management Journal (AMJ)
Contacts :
College of Management of Technology
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Station 5, Odyssea 3.04
CH-1015 Lausanne / Switzerland
http://entc.epfl.ch
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). Ventures HO!