The authors of this book set out to make it fun to read with stories included about entrepreneurs that are intended to interest and excite the reader. At the same time, they want the reader to reflect inwards, i.e. on themselves and the entrepreneur within. They also intend that the book will help lead to the making of more winners, and fewer losers from those who start businesses. Their definition of an entrepreneur is “A person who habitually creates and innovates to build something of recognised value around perceived opportunities”. They go on to define some of the key words they use, e.g. a “person” can also be represented as a group of people or teams or even organisations who are entrepreneurial. “Habitual” is an important characteristic of entrepreneurs that the authors say distinguishes them from business owner managers, or people who build a business simply to achieve a comfortable lifestyle. The real and true entrepreneur cannot stop being an entrepreneur. Using a definition like theirs means that the authors can include many examples of what they term as entrepreneurship which, in time, will no doubt lead to a lot of debate and discussion about whether they are right or not. They include entrepreneurs, as they define them, from the world of art and music, such as Michaelangelo and Mozart. Bolton and Thompson include a great deal of brief profiles from this wide variety of entrepreneurs – these are not case studies in the academic sense (see Yin, 1994) as stated in the book. In reality, many of the people that they chose for this have contributed much more to their chosen field than can readily be communicated in a few words.
The book is structured in three parts, with Part I focused on entrepreneurs. This is really concerned with the “who” question, e.g. who is an entrepreneur? The authors argue that understanding entrepreneurs and their talent and temperament, as well as their technique, puts the role of the entrepreneur in context. Part II deals with entrepreneurs in action, in other words the “what?” questions – what does an entrepreneur do? What happens in the real world? What do they actually achieve? Finally, Part III, deals with entrepreneurs and enterprise or the “how” questions – how do the entrepreneurs do what they do? How do systems operate? How do they achieve their goals?
There are approximately 370 pages and 14 chapters and the authors have included material on issues such as Internet entrepreneurs and e‐business. This is very timely and the authors have captured some of the excitement and involvement from the entrepreneurs in this rapidly growing area. The first two chapters form Part I, the next seven chapters form Part II and the last five chapters make up Part III. There are good references listed at the end of each chapter and user‐friendly tables and diagrams used throughout to illustrate points and get messages across to the reader. It is not clear who the target audience is, although the authors say they “hope this book will help to make entrepreneurship a serious career option for the young graduate, with the right talents and temperament through new courses and staff that support and enable this”. The authors appear to want this to meet many needs and it should appeal to either potential or successful entrepreneurs. It is their intention that the release of entrepreneur talent, which could be identified and realised by potential entrepreneurs, could transform business start‐ups and growth. Although it says that it is ideal for students and those with a non‐academic background, it is not easy to place the book in an academic context as either a module or course text, or whether it should be used in the general sense as good back‐up material and additional reading.
In “Identifying the entrepreneur” (chapter 1), like so many other texts such as Bygrave (1999) or Timmons (1999), the born or made argument and entrepreneurial behaviour and attributes of what makes an entrepreneur are covered. An interesting approach is adopted by the authors in looking at what entrepreneurs do – particularly where a series of ten factors are drawn together to explain the activities of entrepreneurs. Factors include entrepreneurs and creativity, innovation, entrepreneurs and locus of control, as well as attitude towards the management of risk. The sub text of the book; talent, temperament and technique, is also explored in a number of pages, e.g. looking at the entrepreneur against the inventor and the leader (p. 31). The exploration of what makes the entrepreneur and why they behave the way they do leads to a major discussion about the linking of talent, temperament and technique. To illustrate their point, the authors have chosen “cricket” as an example. However, the chosen sportsman “Tyson” may not be well known enough to go down well around the world with this kind of analogy. However, the idea that these three things, talent, temperament and technique have to exist in sportsmen is certainly one way of explaining it. Underpinning the writing in this chapter, is the Gallup polls on life themes and entrepreneurship which were conducted some time ago. In 1986 an entrepreneur perceiver questionnaire was developed from a series of focus groups and interviews with successful entrepreneurs which identified a number of life themes. The chapter contains these themes, with a brief description of what they are and where the authors have used these, to bring together their own model of what the entrepreneur is trying to do. Building on the work carried out by Gallup/SRI, the authors have developed their own outline of profiling the entrepreneur, coupling their own preferred life themes. The way this has been done is debatable; they have grouped creativity, formulation and problem solving under “creativity” and under “team” individualised perception and expertise orientation are grouped together. These groupings would not necessarily be accepted by everyone as being the same. Certainly under creativity, problem identification is every bit as valuable as problem solving.
Chapter 2 deals with entrepreneurs and strategy. Useful models are represented here showing the flow between identifying an opportunity and making the most of it. These models could be very useful for teaching, e.g. looking at things such as strategic positioning and continuous improvement through innovation. The authors also discuss the building of the organisation, about flexibility, focus and attitude of entrepreneurs who have built successful organisations. They also deal very briefly with the position of intrapreneurship in an explicit manner. However, it should be noted that given the definition of entrepreneurship developed by the authors, we all are, or could be, intrapreneurs and thus entrepreneurs. There is also a useful part on signals of weak entrepreneurial leadership and what can be done about this.
Part II is really all about the entrepreneurs and what they do. Chapters include “Legendary entrepreneurs, aesthetic entrepreneurs”. “Entrepreneurs in the shadows”, “Entrepreneurs of Silicone Valley” and “New Internet entrepreneurs”. Much can be learned from this, as the examples chosen include people like Richard Branson in the business world and James Dyson. Many examples come from the States as well as the UK. In the Arts, many people would readily acknowledge Cameron Mackintosh as an entrepreneur. He raises capital, he takes risks, he funds new ventures on the stage and produces the plays and musical entertainment. It may be more difficult for people to accept Mozart as an entrepreneur, yet in many ways he was similar in that he tried to bring his work to a wider audience. This material could be the source of much debate, e.g. whether a musician who is commissioned to write work could be classed as an entrepreneur while there were other musicians around at that time. Indeed, the work of artists such as Michaelangelo and Leonardo are also included, albeit very briefly, and it is interesting to consider that they, in their own way, were entrepreneurs. However, they were also acknowledged masters of their crafts who ran schools with pupil and had patrons. Were they any different from others who worked with them at the time? The real entrepreneurs were perhaps the people who paid them to do the work. If we consider the case of Richard Branson, who is acknowledged as a serial and habitual entrepreneur, he does not make the music that he brings to the marketplace through Virgin. In his early career, he identified a niche, he came in‐between. He saw what was available and he provided it for the buyers. So there could be much debate about the inclusion or exclusion of some of the entrepreneurs in this section. Consider also that the profiles are very short. Thus, we have very little written about Isambard Kingdom Brunel who has been an inspiration to generations of engineers since his lifetime and he has been written off in a less than fair manner – given the description in the text. This kind of approach will further fuel the debate of who and what is an entrepreneur.
The third section of the book looks at the system and processes that the entrepreneurs operate in. Starting with the links between entrepreneurs and the enterprise that they are either working in or the environment that they are working in. It deals with issues such as innovation but again, because of the very brief amount of space available, it just touches on the issues. In the entrepreneurs world, much can be said about the different entrepreneurs and what they do. The enterprise paradigm deals with differences between managers and entrepreneurs. In examining how the entrepreneur operates (chapter 12), the authors provide some interesting enterprise and entrepreneurial process models looking at entrepreneurship and leadership, and entrepreneurship and management. They also explore issues about the ideas – where do they come from? Where can they be generated? Some of the models could be very useful in bringing ideas to potential entrepreneurs who may be thinking about things but have not captured this in a vision that they can follow.
Bolton and Thompson also look at the various stages of the Enterprise Growth Model from the beginning of getting ready to actually taking off and beginning the venture that they are involved in. For the support networks such as the LECs and TECs, chapter 12 would prove to be very useful as this deals with how the entrepreneur can be spotted and supported and what they need from the environment that they are in to help to support them. Some very interesting arguments are put forward, for example the idea that looking at various sectors and how the ideas are generated. The kind of enterprise that can come from them could prove to be a nice starting point for some of the support network. This chapter would sit very nicely when coupled with the material developed by Scottish Enterprise to deal with start‐ups and the support material for would be entrepreneurs (McVey, 1998).
Techniques for the entrepreneur are included. For example the life‐cycle models, cash demand and some of the difficulties that the entrepreneurs may face. Gaining an appreciation of other issues such as evaluating the opportunity, bringing funds in and being careful with outgoing funds are also highlighted for the readers. Unfortunately this chapter (14) is just a gloss over of what is done and it also includes things like the business plan in a very brief note form. So this is really just drawing the attention of the reader to some of the many things they may have to deal with elsewhere.
Overall, this is a very interesting text to read and provides a lot to think about for the entrepreneur. In teaching terms, it is difficult to pin down exactly where this book could be used, but it could be taken as inspirational in a number of ways. First, it has taken a wide view of what makes an entrepreneur. It targets a wide audience and convinces people that they can be entrepreneurial. Thus, the authors have chosen a wide range of topics which should appeal to many types of potential entrepreneurs, or intrapreneurs. On the downside, the breadth of their definition and interpretation may lead to confusion. For example, there may well be reasonable arguments for including criminals in entrepreneurial activities – but do they fit the definitions of key writers on entrepreneurship (see Deakins, 1999); there may also be disputes about whether an artist is really an entrepreneur or a good journeyman. Over and above this, obvious examples of key entrepreneurial figures and entrepreneurial actions are missing in some of the selected areas. Such as Beatle George Harrison ploughing funds into the Film Industry and Michael Jackson beating Paul McCartney to the purchase of the Beatles music catalogue!
The last section in the book glosses over a great number of key issues and the supporting texts would be needed for almost everything that is touched on. For example, looking at innovation the book by Tidd et al. (1997) would be a very useful complement to this and similarly looking at investment, articles by Mason and Harrison (see e.g. 1998) would complement this very well. Other texts on the market such as Bygrave (1999), Timmons (1999), Birley and Muzyka (1997) and Gates et al. (1995) would certainly provide good further material to read over. Whereas Timmons has taken in‐depth case studies of organisations to illustrate the fact, these authors have taken qualitative, brief pen descriptions of entrepreneurs to illustrate what they achieved. To would be entrepreneurs, this text would make a very interesting read and perhaps encourage them to achieve what they try to set out to achieve. In the classroom, it could be used for much debate, much research around the themes about the personality, the achievements and the mechanism for achieving the how. In this respect, the authors have achieved what they set out to do, it was fun to read, full of interesting aspects, and could stimulate and perhaps instigate entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial behaviour in any form of organisation or group of people.
