University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Entrepreneurial Attitude
Book

The Entrepreneurial Attitude

Lessons from Junior Achievement’s 100 Years of Developing Young Entrepreneurs

Larry Farrell
McGraw-Hill, 2018
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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Concrete Examples
  • For Beginners
  • Insider's Take

Recommendation

Larry C. Farrell, a longtime advocate of Junior Achievement (JA) and founder of The Farrell Company, a global entrepreneur-training firm, compiled JA’s best lessons to celebrate the organization’s 100th anniversary. He is meticulous and thorough as he outlines JA’s “musts” for budding entrepreneurs and newly minted innovators. Farrell inserts historical insights from renowned corporate leaders and testimonials from former JA participants who are now outstanding executives. He illustrates his entrepreneurship principles with graphs that demonstrate important points. This heartfelt overview of the benefits of Junior Achievement will bring a smile to past, present and aspiring participants.

Summary

Junior Achievement (JA), an organization for young businesspeople, believes smart strategy and strong culture lead to successful entrepreneurship.

Junior Achievement distills the requirements of being a successful entrepreneur into five strategic questions that its student participants answer when they write their business plans: what do they enjoy doing, what are they good at, what unserved market niche do they hope to serve, what skills will they need and how much cash are they going to want?

To demonstrate the relevance of these questions in planning a business, consider a Swedish scientist who worked in the research department of Squibb Pharmaceutical. Squibb rejected several of his innovative ideas because most of them served niche markets that wouldn’t have been moneymakers for the giant pharma company. The scientist felt strongly about the potential of one particular product idea. He quit his job to gamble on the marketability of diapers for the elderly. This idea filled a need for a market the multinational company didn’t serve. The scientist built a winning business.

This failure-to-success story answers most of Junior Achievement’s five pivotal...

About the Author

Larry C. Farrell is the author of three other books on entrepreneurship and founder of The Farrell Company, a global research and entrepreneurship teaching company with a presence in 40 countries. 

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