Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook

Bill Aulet

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781119365785
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

The essential companion to the book that revolutionized entrepreneurship

Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook provides a practical manual for working the 24-step framework presented in Disciplined Entrepreneurship. Unlocking key lessons and breaking down the steps, this book helps you delve deeper into the framework to get your business up and running with a greater chance for success. You'll find the tools you need to sharpen your instinct, engage your creativity, work through hardship, and give the people what they want—even if they don't yet know that they want it. Real-world examples illustrate the framework in action, and case studies highlight critical points that can make or break you when your goal is on the line. Exercises and assessments help you nail down your strengths, while pointing out areas that could benefit from reinforcement—because when it comes to your business, "good enough" isn't good enough— better is always better.

Disciplined Entrepreneurship transformed the way that professionals think about starting a company, and this book helps you dig into the proven framework to make your business dreams a reality.

• Delve deeper into the 24 steps to success
• Innovate, persevere, and create the product people want
• Internalize lessons learned from real-world entrepreneurs
• Test your understanding with exercises and case studies

The book also includes new material on topics the author has found to be extremely useful in getting the most value out of the framework including Primary Market Research, Windows of Opportunity and Triggers. The book also introduces the Disciplined Entrepreneurship Canvas to track your progress on this journey.

Starting a company is a serious undertaking, with plenty of risk and sacrifice to go around—so why not minimize the risk and make the outcome worth the sacrifice? Author Bill Aulet's 24-step framework is proven to build a successful business; the key is in how well you implement it. Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook helps you master the skills, tools, and mindset you need to get on your path to success.

STEP 1
Market Segmentation

WHAT IS STEP 1, MARKET SEGMENTATION?

Brainstorm how your idea or technology can serve a variety of potential end users. Narrow that list of potential end users to several promising categories, then conduct primary market research to gain more information about each potential end user.

WHY DO WE DO THIS STEP, AND WHY DO WE DO IT NOW?

It is crucial to start the process with a focus on a target customer. Everything else about your business will be based on that focus.

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By the Book: See pages 23–35 of Disciplined Entrepreneurship for basic knowledge on this step.

See pages 36–39 of Disciplined Entrepreneurship for an example of how a company addressed this step.

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The Market Segmentation step gives you the right frame of mind for the new product right from the start.

PROCESS GUIDE

The single necessary and sufficient condition for a business is a paying customer. If people don’t give you money in exchange for your product, nothing else matters. As I discuss in Disciplined Entrepreneurship, the best way for an innovative startup to lay the groundwork for a solid company is to dominate a narrow, carefully defined market that serves a particular end user. To choose the best market, you’ll do a Market Segmentation that uses primary market research to pinpoint the best markets to draw your attention. Later, you’ll select one of these markets and dig deeper in the process of determining exactly who your customer will be.

An end user (the foundation of a market segment) is a category of people who have similar needs and customer pains. End users typically have similar demographics and other characteristics. Rigorously categorizing end users, which is what you want to do, is much more detailed than you may think. For instance, an education startup would be poorly served by targeting the general category “teachers” as their end users, as it is too general. This general description ignores the differences between public and private schools; primary, secondary, and postsecondary education; rural, suburban, and urban school districts; and young, inexperienced teachers and older, veteran teachers.

In this workbook, ...