Just received an email from the NDE (National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship) and they have a great 2008 reading list on entrepreneurship. They did include Richard Florida’s Who’s Your City; a book whose entire life-cycle I witnessed up close while I worked with Richard. It was an amazing process. Here are some (4) reviews from NDE’s list — which is well worth checking out:
Vermeers Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World
Timothy Brook (Bloomsbury Press, 2007)
You may be wondering how a book about Vermeer makes it on a listing of books about innovation and entrepreneurship. In this fascinating book, Brook uses the subjects and objects of Vermeers paintings to provide history of the development of global capitalism. Vermeers rise paralleled the Netherlands rise as a major economic force, and Brook tells these stories by tracing the emergence of trade in new products like tobacco, porcelain, and furs.
Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital
Spencer E. Ante (Harvard Business School Press, 2008)
It often seems like the venture capital industry has been around forever, but, in reality, someone had to invent it. That someone was French business professor and investor Georges Doriot, and his achievement occurred not too long ago. Beginning in 1946, Doriot and his firm, American Research and Development Corporation, virtually created the modern model of the venture capital firm. This well-written biography examines Doriots life and his impact on the world of business finance. (more…)
