Entrepreneurs ─ Talent, Temperament and Opportunity

If you have an interest in things entrepreneurial and wonder if you have what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, then this book is written for you. Authors Bill Bolton and John Thompson offer a unique focus, seeing everything through the eyes of the entrepreneur.

This refreshed third edition is split into two fascinating parts. Part I builds an understanding of the entrepreneur as a person based on the key factors of talent and temperament - a unique framework for understanding and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities. The process of starting and growing a business and the infrastructure and environment in which the entrepreneur has to operate, are described in detail. Part II tells the stories of famous entrepreneurs including classic figures such as Henry Ford, through to social entrepreneurs and even anti-social entrepreneurs such as Al Capone!

This insightful, empirically based, original take on the entrepreneur, and thereby entrepreneurship, provides students with a new and challenging way into the subject.

Bill Bolton is an international consultant in enterprise development and entrepreneurship. He has held a personal UNITWIN (UNESCO) Chair in Innovation and Technology Transfer. He was the Founding Director of the St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge and taught engineering at Cambridge University. Bill spent half his career in business and industry and half in academia. His other publications include: The University Handbook on Enterprise Development (1997) and jointly with John Thompson, The Entrepreneurs in Focus: Achieve Your Potential (2003).

John Thompson is Emeritus Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Huddersfield, UK and, part-time, Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at Anglia Ruskin University, UK. He has also held visiting appointments in Australia, Finland and New Zealand. John has published a number of titles, including the seventh edition of his textbook Strategic Management: Awareness and Change which is soon to be published and he has written a number of journal articles, especially on social entrepreneurship

Both Bill and John have been involved in business start-ups in many countries over a number of years and they have interviewed a diverse range of entrepreneurs.