New Book Review: "Entrepreneur Journeys v.4"
New book review for Entrepreneur Journeys v.4: Innovation - Need of the Hour (Volume 4), by Sramana Mitra, CreateSpace, 2010:
A sidebar interview with the author in a recent issue of "IEEE Spectrum" magazine made me aware of this "Entrepreneur Journeys" series of books. Although Mitra does write introductions to each of the sections of this book, other than the comments she shares as part of her questioning, the bulk of what she provides to readers are the interviews themselves. In this respect, this collection of interviews reminds me of "Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming" (see my review), by Peter Seibel, although the interview direction here is not as weighty, and is concentrated at the business level, although technology is discussed to some extent because of the nature of the products with which the interviewee entrepreneurs have been associated.
Mitra groups the 13 interviews in this series entry into 4 loose categories: "Legendary Innovators", "Innovators in Academia", "Cross-Domain Innovators", and "Shoestring Innovators". The reason I use the term "loose" is because the interviewees can feasibly be categorized in a multitude of ways, and the interviewer decided to concentrate on innovation. The author notes in her prologue that "In this volume, I offer a multitude of lenses through which entrepreneurs can look at innovation in its various forms and decide on the right course of action for themselves. And as before, I have included a discussion on bootstrapping and shoestring innovation, which still remains one of the most practical ways to circumvent the early-stage fund crunch while maintaining control and freedom."