Lecturers' Zone

Welcome to the lecturers site for the 2^nd edition of  Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

The resources here represent over 30 hours of teaching time. In addition the book contains exercises and assignments and essays and discussion topics.

This site gives you access to PowerPoint presentations to support over 17 hours of teaching and cases and case notes to support a further 9 hours. Other resources are available on the open-access student site. In addition the book itself contains essays and discussion topics as well as exercise and assignments.

If you would like to discuss any aspects of the book with me or make any suggestions for additions, updates or revisions you can contact me at paul.burns@beds.ac.uk.

Click on a resource to access it:

PowerPoint Slides

Case Notes

Speciman Business Plans with Teaching Notes

Revisions and Updates

On the open-access student site you will find:

• An interactive version of the General Enterprise Tendency (GET) test
  
• An interactive version of the Leadership style questionnaire
• An interactive version of the Accounting Quiz
• Downloadable version of the Entrepreneurship Exercise
• Downloadable version of the Growth Audit
• Downloadable version of the Pro-forma Business Plan
• Downloadable versions of the specimen Business Plans with questions
• Downloadable versions of the cases with questions

Ways of Using the Book

Entrepreneurship and Small Business is written for a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses with the aim of fostering entrepreneurial talent and developing entrepreneurial skills. These are described below as three pathways. Each pathway is likely to use this book differently, although there is a core of common material.

Pathway 1

First year undergraduate business studies skill-development courses. This is the typical ‘introduction to business course’. However, rather than teach each topic in its own ‘compartmentilised’ session, relevant chapters are designed to act as a holistic introduction to the topic of business studies in the practical context of a business start-up project. In this way students can better see the intercontections and realise that the solution to business problems require the application of a wide range of business skills. Relevance and practicality can also aid motivation.

Pathway 2

Third year undergraduate and postgraduate business studies skill-development courses. These develop the themes to a greater depth by looking at growth as well as start-up and can be used by students who have previously studied business by skimming early skills-based chapters. Students can undertake the start-up project or the business growth audit. For students who have previously studied business and management, an entreprteneurship course typically aims to integrate and apply most of the functional areas they have previously studied and give it a creative but practical focus. Again this helps them better see the intercontections in the topics they have already studied and realise that the solution to business problems require the application of all the areas they have studied.

Pathway 3

Third year undergraduate and postgraduate specialist courses on entrepreneurship and small business (including MBA). Students can use the book to study this topic in its own right - reviewing research and developing their understanding of the sector. They can rely simply on the essays and discussion topics or exercises and activities or alternatively undertake the business growth audit. For these students, the entreprteneurship course still aims to integrate and apply the functional areas they have previously studied and give it a creative but practical focus, albeit at a higher level, but also to give them an insight into the study of entrepreneurship and small business in its own right. The second edition has been enhanced by the inclusion of chapters on social, international and corporate entrepreneurship.

It would be nice to think that students will find this book sufficiently interesting to read it all, but given the pressure of time and the different skills and backgrounds of these groups, it is more realistic to think that they will dip into it where they find it relevant to their course. The table below attempts to signpost which chapters are most relevant to these three pathway groups. Students will find many of the accounting concepts in chapters 7 and 11 difficult to grasp. Since many courses may wish to omit some of this material, the more technical aspects have been relegated to appendices in these chapters.

If you like Entrepreneurship and Small Business, you might also like Corporate Entrepreneurship: building an Entrepreneurial Organisation. This is about the ability of large organisations to make the most of commercial opportunities, to innovate and to do things differently – about developing not just the strategic capability to manage change but to embrace it, create it and shape it to deliver sustainable competitive advantage.

‘Combines an outstanding command of theory and a deep appreciation of managerial practice. Well-written and well-grounded in today’s market realities this lively discussion analyses a diverse range of managerial skills and offers a wealth of practical guidance. A wonderful and most helpful book.’
- Shaker A Zahra, Paul T Babson Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship, Babson College, USA.