The first part of the book explores fundamental nature of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mindset, universal values that affect entrepreneur’s decisions and behaviors, some of entrepreneurial types and challenges most entrepreneurs face every day.

Every year more and more people leave their jobs and start their own business. The most common reason why people give up traditional jobs and start their own is opportunity to be more independent and self-actualized. The stimuli for this new start might be an emergency or suddenly surfaced opportunity. Sometimes, first steps are taken in parallel to the main occupation and in some cases, people fully dive into adventures of entrepreneurship. Sometimes doing you own business is much more profitable. Although if it does not harvest a lot of money, it may bring social capital and a sense of self-worth. In any case, according to the research, majority of people who’ve had successful or even failed entrepreneurial experiences can no longer imagine living and working the old way.  Their mindsets, attitudes and behaviors are changed forever. People with experience in entrepreneurship develop skills of identifying and using opportunities, coming up to innovative ways of problem solving and implementing ideas. Such people are in demand everywhere. Every company and every country want their employees and citizens to be self-sufficient and independent, capable of overcoming personal and societal problems, find jobs easily and create employment opportunities for others too. Although not everyone is able to become an entrepreneur, we all need at least some entrepreneurial skills to be successful.

The first part of the textbook consists of three chapters: 

Chapter 1  introduces to the essence of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs’ mission, values and ambitions.

Chapter 2 describes types of entrepreneurs and the challenges they face every day.

In chapter 3 we deep dive into entrepreneurial competences and skills which help you to be successful in any field.

Upon completion of the part one you will be able to:

Understand and Evaluate:

• The essence of entrepreneurship, mindset, forms, values, and life challenges.
• Your own entrepreneurial competences.
• The role of entrepreneurship in economic progress. Independently Develop:

Your own entrepreneurial competences development plan

Second part of the textbook is dedicated to development of skills of identifying future opportunities and optimizing them. If in the past reflection on the present and forecasting the future were associated only to the specific fields, professions, or jobs, currently every single individual needs development of intuition and imagination to define future opportunities.

This part of the textbook aims to build an understanding how short, medium and long-term impact of cultural changes affect local and global environment, business, science, technology, fashion, architecture and art. Here you work on developing intuition and imagination to identify existing and future opportunities in any sector and use this information to implement meaningful ideas.

Second part of the textbook includes three chapters:

Chapter 4 reviews trend as a phenomenon, discusses its creators and followers, dynamics of trend’s evolution and dissemination in society.

In Chapter 5 we are talking about research methods of opportunity identification, ethnographic observation, and empathy research.

Chapter 6 is dedicated to techniques of identifying possible, plausible, probable, and preferable future opportunities.

Upon completion of the second part, you will be able to:

• Understand how the trends are born and developed and foresee their future movement trajectory.
• Learn about key actors supporting trend dissemination and identify strategies for supporting trend adoption.
• Get acquainted to trend research methodologies to define Possible, Plausible, Probable, Preferable future scenarios.
• Use this information for implementation of your ideas and elaboration of strategies on how to be better prepared for the future.

The third part teaches how to develop innovative ideas. It’s amazing how innovators imagine completely new, radically different solutions, which fundamentally transform consumer behavior and norms established during the long period of time. Don’t we all wonder how these innovative ideas are born and how innovators get creativity inspired? 

Over the last decades, increased attention is drawn towards the study of innovation process. For example, we already know that creative ideas emerge in cities, campuses, organizations, online platforms, or technological hubs, where inclusion, diversity, good networking opportunities and psychologically safe and free environment exists. Successful companies open their boundaries and invite consumers, suppliers, strategic partners, universities, or online platforms to develop their products and services.

Innovative organizations try to form more open, inspirational, and interactive working environment, where people are not afraid to express their opinion, try new things and even make mistakes. Ethnographic observation on customers and expressing empathy towards them are known to be the best methods to innovatively solve consumer problems. However, it’s a fact that innovation is a not a product of a system, but it is created by creatively active person, who is connected to that system. Therefore, if we want to have innovative ideas, first we should work on boosting our creative confidence.

Third part of the textbook include three chapters:

In Chapter 7 process of innovation is described.

Chapter 8 is dedicated to methodology for innovative problem solving – Design Thinking.

In Chapter 9 we will talk about principles of behavioral science. Knowing these help entrepreneurs to elaborate and communicate value propositions.

After the completion of the third part, you will be able to:

• Define the essence of innovation and its importance and understand the process of innovation.
• Define consumer needs and wants based on empathy research.
• Develop creative ideas of product/service and select the most optimal ones.
• Create prototype of minimally viable product/service for further testing.

Human, technical, and financial resources are needed to implement entrepreneurial ideas. Managing resources and setting goals are pre-requisite for successful entrepreneurship. In this part of the textbook, we will explore entrepreneur’s’ ability to mobilize necessary resources and fulfil his/her ideas.

The success of organization is based on its people. The process of human resources management, establishing existing rules, habits, and values form the organizational culture and are very important for entrepreneur.

Financial accounting plays a crucial role in forecasting past and future of your business. Analyzing company’s financial condition and profitability is a starting point for mobilizing new investments.

Forth part of the textbook includes two chapters:

Chapter 10 is about managing resources and simplified financial accounting and reporting.

In Chapter 11 management of human resources and self-effectiveness are discussed.

After the completion of the third part, you will be able to:

• Define necessary and available financial, human, and technical resources and analyze collected data.
• Identify costs and taxes related to idea implementation.
• Understand entrepreneurs’ challenges and opportunities related to human resources management.
• Define mechanisms of creating organizational culture in your company.

In the world of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity (VUCA) we need much more courage and foresight to turn our ideas into reality. Turning idea into action is one of the most crucial entrepreneurial skills. In fact, lots of people have entrepreneurial ideas, however most of them find it difficult to make decisions in conditions of uncertainty, obscurity, and high risks.

Tools for noticing opportunities, validating idea, and identifying necessary resources discussed in the previous parts of the textbook will help us to start working on market entry strategy. For that purpose, entrepreneur undertakes several strategic decisions: who will be my ideal consumer and how I connect to her/him? How will I use technologies? What kind of identity and culture I want to create? Who will be my competitors? Such decisions are easier to make after the in-depth analyzing of the environment.

At first, we reflect on what principle our organization creates and delivers value and only then start working on consumer-oriented marketing strategy. Communication strategies, whether it is social media, press or business investor, will be developed after defining the business model.

Fifth part of the textbook includes six chapters:

In Chapter 12 we will review methods of developing entrepreneurial strategies.

Chapter 13 is about anatomy of business model.

In Chapter 14 we define the consumer-oriented marketing strategy.

Chapter 15 reviews effective communication with consumers through social media.

In Chapter 16 we share communication techniques with media, as well as potential investors.

Chapter 17 reviews legal forms of entrepreneurship. Chapter 18 introduces business plan framework.

After the completion of the fifth part, you will:

• Understand how your organization could create and deliver value to customers and develop business model.
• Analyze a consumer market based on political, economic, social, and technological analyses of the environment.
• Develop marketing and communication strategy necessary for implementation of the business strategy.
• Critically analyze legal forms of entrepreneurship. • Create a business plan for presenting to investors.