Prof Inderjit Singh invites everybody to think like an entrepreneur to recover Covid 19’s economic effects through his recent book ‘Art of Entrepreneurship’. Prof Singh is a board member of the World Business Angels Investment Forum – an affiliated partner of the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI), President of the Global startup Investment Promotion Agency (WIPA). As a former parliament member of Singapore, Prof Singh invites all policy makers to develop smarter policies to support business transformation of small entreprises.
AI – What problem is this book supposed to solve?
I wrote this book to solve 3 problems.
I believe entrepreneurship is more about having the right mindset than about starting companies. My main goal is to share how anyone can think like an entrepreneur and how and entrepreneurial mindset can solve any problems we may encounter in life.
Entrepreneurs who are ready to start companies often lack enough knowledge and skill sets to do it correctly. How can they gain these?
How can anyone, an aspiring entrepreneur, a leader, an employee, a policy maker, learn from history and from experiences of successful entrepreneurs, for key events that shaped the past economies and businesses?
AI – How will it solve the problem? / How will the book help readers?
In my book, I have addressed these problems that will allow anyone to learn how to think like an entrepreneur.
I have converted the most abstract aspects about how an entrepreneur thinks and does things into learnable theories of entrepreneurship and integrated these with academic and real-life experiences and examples so that the reader can easily relate to and understand the in-depths of entrepreneurial thinking. I call this the Art of Entrepreneurship (the Abstract part). And more importantly, I have converted practice to theory (note we always hear converting to theory to practice – I have done the reverse by converting the practice of an entrepreneur to teachable theories). I have included many real entrepreneurship and start-up stories, experiences and examples of my own and of many successful entrepreneurs so that the reader can easily visualize the theory I wish to impart, and this will make it easy for anyone who want to think like an entrepreneur to learn. Again, I believe any ready had read the first section will be able to learn to think and work like an entrepreneur no matter hat he or she does in life.
The 2nd section of my book is about the “How to”. For anyone ready to start a company, you must understand all the intricacies and develop the right skill sets and understand the entrepreneurial ecosystem that an entrepreneur must work with in order to create successful start-up. In the section, I start right from the beginning – you have an idea, who do your transform the idea into a business model and then into a business. The section then brings the entrepreneurs all the way from start to scaling up. I spend a significant part of this section on fund raising, which is one of the greatest challenges entrepreneurs face, in their start-up journey. Based on my experiences of raising funds, as big as US$138million for my first start-up and also investing in and mentoring start-ups, I share how entrepreneurs can successfully raise funds at the different stages of their company growth. In all this section imparts skillsets and knowledge on how to start and grow their companies.
The world has gone through many cycles in terms of economic growths and collapses. In the 3rd section of the book, I capture many lessons learnt from the past – starting with the Great Depression of 1929, past recessions, the dot.com bubble, all the way to the current Covid-19 economic crisis. Start-ups too go through cycles like economic cycles – there are good times, bad times, complex times, team issue and many more. Based on my experiences, the experiences of successful global entrepreneurs, and based on history, I develop a series of lessons learnt and guidelines and skills set, that entrepreneurs, leaders, businessmen, policy makers and anyone involved in the whole Innovation ecosystem can use to survive, emerge stronger and create success in the face of any crises and challenges they may face.
AI – Question 3 : Tell us More about the book
The book is very readable, like a story book, so it will be easy and fun to read. I have structured the book so that the reader can jump to any chapter and still have a complete picture of the topic he or she is interested to learn about. This book can also be used as a textbook. I have created theories of Entrepreneurship, added material that I have researched on entrepreneurship that I use to teach at the Nanyang Technology University’s Masters of Technopreneruship program. This will help teachers and students gain a better grasp about innovation and entrepreneurship. I hope this book will inspire many more people to not just become entrepreneurs, but also to think like one, no matter who you are – an employee, a teacher, a civil servant, a parent, and sportsman, anyone.
The book is also available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, WHSmith and other online bookshops.
The publisher, World Scientific is happy to offer a special 20% Discount if you purchase the book at https://doi.org/10.1142/12319. Quote promo code “WSENTR20” while ordering, valid till 30 July 2022.
