Informed Success: A Bibliography for Student Entrepreneurs

With business advice from an expert entrepreneur, learn how to identify and leverage the key factors that will bring sustainability and success to your startup.

In order to make a difference, any modern nonprofit needs to achieve multimillion-dollar annual revenues. After surveying more than 200 high-performing entrepreneurs across the country--including the leaders of Teach for America, City Year, Donors Choose, charity: water, and Hot Bread Kitchen--Kathleen Kelly Janus is here to show you how to reach and sustain lasting organizational growth. Janus asked a simple question: "What is the key to nonprofit success?" The answers she received reveal five key strategies responsible for the most successful social startups: Testing Ideas, Measuring Impact, Funding Experimentation, Leading Collaboratively, Telling Compelling Stories

In these uncertain times, we need every bit of creativity and determination to find better solutions. The stories in "Social Startup Success" and the tools it recommends will help you to make your organization--whether a fledging startup or a large, well-established operation--thrive.

Wharton professor Ian C. MacMillan and Dr. James Thompson, director of the Wharton Social Entrepreneurship Program, provide a tough-love approach that significantly increases the likelihood of a successful social enterprise launch in the face of the high-uncertainty conditions typically encountered by social entrepreneurs. MacMillan and Thompson used their own systematic framework to publish The Social Entrepreneur's Playbook. To test the market, they offered the first phase in their start-up method (step 1) as a free ebook. Readers were invited to join The Social Entrepreneur's Advisory Group, and nearly 300 aspiring and active social entrepreneurs shared feedback that helped shape the complete edition of the book, which covers all three steps in the start-up to scale-up process.

Based on this crowd-sourced feedback from readers of the free ebook and drawing on the authors' more than 26 years' combined experience developing and studying social enterprises in the field across Africa and in the United States, this new edition provides guidance for each phase:

Phase One: Pressure Test Your Start-Up Idea. Based on the free ebook, this expanded section now includes advice on setting revenue and social impact goals, how to navigate the sociopolitical landscape, and how to develop a strong concept statement. In addition, MacMillan and Thompson provide advice on how to identify and test a proposed revenue-generating solution and define and segment your target population.
Phase Two: Plan Your Social Enterprise. All new to this edition, this critical phase shows you how to frame and scope the venture, determine what it will take to actually deliver a sustainable enterprise, identify the key assumptions that have been made, and design checkpoints to test those assumptions before making major investments.
Phase Three: Launch and Scale Your Social Enterprise. Available for the first time in this edition, you will learn how to effectively launch your enterprise, manage upside potential and downside risk, and strategically scale up.

Filled with accessible frameworks and tools, as well as inspiring stories of social entrepreneurs, "The Social Entrepreneur's Playbook" is a must-read for any aspiring or active social entrepreneur, as well as philanthropists, foundations, and nonprofits interested in doing more good with fewer resources.

Written by two respected academics who work with a highly-regarded social enterprise incubator, this is the first social enterprise textbook to combine theory with current cases from around the world to illustrate concepts and provide critical insights into what works, filling a huge gap in the literature. Interest in social enterprises is exploding in business schools. Social ventures seek to bring the discipline and energy of private enterprise to the task of solving problems like poverty, lack of clean water, and poor environmental quality. Although several textbooks exist to introduce the concept to students, this is the only one to combine current theory with extensive real-world examples. It draws on the collective intelligence of more than 200 Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in mentoring more than 700 social entrepreneurs at the Global Social Benefit Institute, a 14-year old social enterprise incubator at Santa Clara University's Miller Center. It offers a complete skill-building framework for both aspiring and practicing social entrepreneurs.

One of today's most acclaimed books on nonprofit leadership, "Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind" is a down-to-earth guide to mission-driven leadership. Drawing on his decades of experience as an acclaimed nonprofit leader, Alex Counts offers practical advice on such vital activities as fundraising, team-building, communications, and management. He shows you how to run an organization-and your own life-both effectively and sustainably, giving joyfully to those around you while also caring generously for yourself.

"Changing the World" was named one of Forbes magazine's 12 Must-Read Books for Nonprofit Employees, and selected as the Chronicle of Philanthropy's Editor's Pick among nonprofit books of 2019. Now it's available in a revised edition, including a new epilogue on leading in times of crisis, responding to the challenging realities nonprofit leaders have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

B Corps have grown from several hundred when the first edition of this book was published to more than 2400 worldwide. This new edition reflects changes in the B Impact Assessment, and incorporates valuable new perspectives on diversity and inclusion.

More than 2,457 companies from 130 industries and 50 countries are leading a global movement to redefine success in business. They're called B Corporations and they are for-profit companies that meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. They create high-quality jobs, build stronger communities, and restore the environment, all while generating solid financial returns. Coauthor and B Corp owner Ryan Honeyman worked with over 100 B Corp CEOs and senior executives to share their tips, advice, and best-practice ideas for how to build a better business, and how to meet the rigorous standards for-and enjoy the benefits of-B Corp certification.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion measures have now become a key part of achieving B Corp certification. In this second edition, new coauthor and B Corp owner Tiffany Jana contributes an introduction about DEI, and works with Honeyman to integrate new DEI frameworks, and provide advice and end-of-chapter discussion questions to get companies talking about critical DEI issues at every stage of the certification process.

What does it take to change the world? This book will show you how to harness the power of CASCADES to create a revolutionary movement!

If you could make a change--any change you wanted--what would it be?  Would it be something in your organization or your industry? Maybe something it's in your community or throughout society as a whole? 

Creating true change is never easy. Most startups don't survive. Most community groups never get beyond small local actions. Even when a spark catches fire and protesters swarm the streets, it often seems to fizzle out almost as fast as it started. The status quo is, almost by definition, well entrenched and never gives up without a fight.

In this groundbreaking book, one of today's top innovation experts delivers a guide for driving transformational change. To truly change the world or even just your little corner of it, you don't need a charismatic leader or a catchy slogan. What you need is a cascade: small groups that are loosely connected but united by a common purpose. 

As individual entities, these groups may seem inconsequential, but when they synchronize their collective behavior as networks, they become immensely powerful. Through the power of cascades, a company can be made anew, an industry disrupted, or even an entire society reshaped. As Satell takes us through past and present movements, he explains exactly why and how some succeed while others fail. 

Do you want your business to step up and make a meaningful difference? There's a new generation of businesses emerging. They're working together to make a positive impact on the world by redefining what it means to be successful. By changing the way you work and considering the impact of the decisions you make, you can join them in reducing poverty, injustice and environmental damage by balancing purpose with profit. In this ground-breaking book, you will discover how these purpose-driven businesses work and how you can:

* Increase productivity by fully embracing diversity and developing an inclusive culture.
* Put respect, courtesy and compassion at the heart of your business.
* Maximise profits whilst prioritising the needs of people and the planet.
* Attract an engaged and motivated workforce that's focused on success and sustainability.

Join the growing global community of leaders and like-minded businesses that are putting what they do to work as a force for good.

"Empowering Leadership of Tomorrow" examines leadership that enables and empowers others to co-participate, co-create, and experience the joy of creativity. It proposes a kind of leadership that fosters bottom-up dynamics, empowering people, groups, teams, and societies. Praszkier shows how this approach, called Empowering Leadership (EL), can drive success in business and, in the case of social entrepreneurship, have an immense social impact. Furthermore, he shows that EL style is also beneficial in other fields, such as parenting and counseling. The book presents diverse case studies from business and social arenas, as well as from family life. It establishes practical guidelines for leadership development, including methods to enhance creativity, and also casts an eye toward the future, demonstrating approaches to navigating future scenarios in a complex and unpredictable environment.

Provides practicing social entrepreneurs, whether nonprofit or for-profit, with a guiding framework and practical recommendations for scaling. It is filled with ideas and examples to make it easier for practitioners to make major strides in resolving serious social problems involving, poverty, health, education, and the environment.

Who drives transformation in society? How do they do it? In this compelling book, strategy guru Roger L. Martin and Skoll Foundation President and CEO Sally R. Osberg describe how social entrepreneurs target systems that exist in a stable but unjust equilibrium and transform them into entirely new, superior, and sustainable equilibria. All of these leaders--call them disrupters, visionaries, or changemakers--develop, build, and scale their solutions in ways that bring about the truly revolutionary change that makes the world a fairer and better place.

The book begins with a probing and useful theory of social entrepreneurship, moving through history to illuminate what it is, how it works, and the nature of its role in modern society. The authors then set out a framework for understanding how successful social entrepreneuars actually go about producing transformative change. There are four key stages: understanding the world; envisioning a new future; building a model for change; and scaling the solution. With both depth and nuance, Martin and Osberg offer rich examples and personal stories and share lessons and tools invaluable to anyone who aspires to drive positive change, whatever the context.

"Getting Beyond Better" sets forth a bold new framework, demonstrating how and why meaningful change actually happens in the world and providing concrete lessons and a practical model for businesses, policymakers, civil society organizations, and individuals who seek to transform our world for good.

Principles for driving significant change throughout an entire system Drawing on the knowledge and experience of working with hundreds the world's top social change leaders in all fields, Beverly Schwartz presents a model for change based on five proven principles that any individual leader or organization can apply to bring about deep, lasting and systematic change. "Rippling" shows how to activate the type of change that is needed to address the critical challenges that threaten to destroy the foundations of our society and planet in these increasingly turbulent times. These actionable principles are brought to life by compelling real-life stories. Schwartz provides a road map that allows anyone to become a changemaker.

* Presents some of today's most innovative and effective approaches to solving social and environmental challenges
* Offers a vision of social entrepreneurs as role models, catalysts, enablers and recruiters who spread waves system changing solutions throughout society

The author offers a model of change that begins with the end result in mind First book from an insider at Ashoka, the foremost global organization on social change through social entrepreneurship "Rippling" clearly demonstrates how and when empathy, creativity, passion, and persistence are combined; significant, life-altering progress is indeed possible.

MAKE YOUR COMPANY A FORCE FOR GOOD You're ambitious. You're not afraid to take risks. You want to bring about positive social change. And while your peers have left a trail of failed start-ups in their wake, you want to initiate change from within an established company, where you can have a more far-reaching, even global impact. Welcome to the club--you're a social intrapreneur. But even with your enviable skill set, your unwavering social conscience, and your determination to change the world, your path to success is filled with challenges. So how do you get started and maintain your momentum?

"Changing Your Company from the Inside Out" provides the tools to empower you to jump-start initiatives that matter to you--and that should matter to your company. Drawing on lessons from social movements as well as on the work of successful intrapreneurs, Gerald Davis and Christopher White provide you with a guide for creating positive social change from within your own organization.

You'll learn how to answer four key questions:
* When is the right time for change? Learn how to read your organization's climate.
* Why is this a compelling change? Use language and stories to connect your initiative to your organization's mission, strategy, and values.
* Who will make this innovation possible? Identify the decision makers you need to persuade and the potential resisters you need to steer around.
* How can you mobilize your supporters to collaborate on your innovation? Use the online and offline tools and platforms that best support your initiative.

This book is a road map for intrapreneurs seeking to reshape their companies into drivers of positive change. If you want to spearhead social innovation from within your company, use this book as your guide.