Becoming a Successful Techpreneur Dr. Jelena Vucetic Author

Aspiring high-tech entrepreneurs around the world dream about starting their own business. Their ideas for a new product or service may be innovative, attractive to the market and financially very promising. However, most of these ideas will not be transformed into commercial products due to the inventors’ lack of courage to start his or her own business, insufficient financing, inadequate management, fierce competition, poor market timing or ineffective product launch.Also, modern business environment has become more challenging for new entrepreneurs, due to: increased global competition and pressure to minimize the operating costs, increased technological complexities and demands for multidisciplinary, virtual teams, limited financing opportunities, and growing pressure to protect the intellectual property. Focusing on unique challenges of starting, growing and selling a high-tech business, this book addresses the following issues: - Making a decision to start a business; - Ownership and control; - Organizational, legal and administrative issues; - Creating new high-tech products and markets; - Effective financing and strategic alternatives as the business grows; - Understanding intellectual property and other business laws; - Dealing with the global competition; - Leveraging on information technology; - Hiring and managing traditional, virtual and global employees; - Exit strategies. This book is for: - aspiring, first-time entrepreneurs interested to learn how to start, develop and sell an independent, small business or consulting firm in the high-tech industry. These readers may be recent collegegraduates, experienced or retired professionals and military, whose background includes electrical engineering, computer science, telecommunications, project management and any other relevant disciplines. Their areas of expertise include: embedded systems, digital signal processing, wireless technology, telecommunications, computer architecture, computer networks, software engineering, Web design and applications, multimedia, multidisciplinary projects, project management, data warehousing, data mining, information systems, nanotechnology, distance learning, telemedicine, robotics, mechanical engineering, etc. - international entrepreneurs, who own or manage high-tech businesses, and are interested in pursuing potential business opportunities with the U.S.-based companies through joint ventures, spin-offs, offshoring, and outsourcing. Their interests include: leveraging on information technology, understanding intellectual property rights and other issues related to business laws, financing and ownership. - educators and consultants in Entrepreneurship, Technology Management and General Business & Technology programs. For these readers, this book can serve as a basis for programs, courses and seminars targeting new potential entrepreneurs and innovators planning to start their own businesses, or ventures within larger organizations.