Bill Aulet - Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook

Illustrations by

Marius Ursache

Edited by

Chris Snyder

Cover image: Marius Ursache

Cover design: Wiley

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright 2017 by Bill Aulet. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO ALL MY STUDENTS WHO MAKE MY SO-CALLED JOB
THE GREATEST ONE IN THE WORLD. YOU GIVE ME ENERGY EVERY DAY. THIS ONE IS FOR YOU.

THE ORIGINAL DISCIPLINED ENTREPRENEURSHIP book laid out a rigorous but practical pedagogy for innovation-driven entrepreneurship. It has fundamentally changed the course of entrepreneurship education from a storytelling approach to a toolbox and systematic framework. But there is only so much that can be accomplished in a single 250-page book. This workbook builds off Disciplined Entrepreneurship to provide a way to more easily engage with the 24 Steps.

Our goal at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship is to develop high-quality entrepreneurship education and make it accessible, not just to MITs full-time students but also to millions of people worldwide. That is why I wrote Disciplined Entrepreneurship, taught several online courses on edX, and with my colleagues write online articles and tools to help clarify key concepts about our methodical approach to entrepreneurship.

The demand from entrepreneurs and instructors for additional materials to help them implement the 24 Steps has been simultaneously rewarding and overwhelming. There needed to be a more scalable solution, and that is the purpose of this workbook.

In this book, I provide templates and additional advice on how to implement each of the 24 Steps. You can use these templates on your own startup or as classroom deliverables to assess your students understanding of the topics. This workbook is not a replacement for Disciplined Entrepreneurship but rather a complement to it. It is expected that you will go back and forth between Disciplined Entrepreneurship and this workbook in order to gain a full understanding of each step.

The 24 Steps is an iterative process, so always make sure you are proactively revising your work as you go through the steps. Something that you do in Step 23 is likely to affect Step 11, or Step 9 will affect Step 5, and so on. Also, do not feel confined by these templates if you need to make some modifications to better suit the needs of the industry or specific characteristics of your startup.

The 24 Steps approach is a toolbox of the best methodologies available for entrepreneurs, and I continually evolve it and survey the landscape to take in new and/or better tools to improve the framework. Youll see two new chapters in this workbook, one on primary market research and another on windows of opportunity and triggers. I hope that many others around the world will continue to test and contribute to the 24 Steps to make the framework even better over time. The collective wisdom of the community is better than any individualplus many hands make for lighter and faster work.

Since the time I first published Disciplined Entrepreneurship, it has become even more clear that we need high-quality, rigorous entrepreneurship education and training sooner rather than later. The critical need for a serious body of knowledge on innovation-driven entrepreneurship has never been greaterand it will only get more so in the future. Please lean in, as Sheryl Sandberg would say, and help us with this cause.

Additional materials, including electronic versions of some of the worksheets herein, will be available at www.disciplinedentrepreneurship.com.

THIS IS NEW MATERIAL that was not covered in Disciplined Entrepreneurship. The Canvas is a tool you will fill out as you go through the 24 Steps.

The Disciplined Entrepreneurship Canvas is a one-page overview of the Disciplined Entrepreneurship approach to entrepreneurship. The Canvas functions like a synopsis of your current status so you can see what you have done and what you have not done, across 10 major areas that map to the 24 Steps.

I have seen the value in life of having a concise visual that gives a team feedback on their progress in the midst of the battle. I have also seen entrepreneurs building workarounds for just this function when trying to use the Disciplined Entrepreneurship approach, so there is clearly value in tracking your progress on the long journey through the 24 Steps.

The Disciplined Entrepreneurship Canvas will allow you to quickly assess the big picture of where you stand, and where your strengths and weaknesses are, so you can make adjustments.