Books

Originally shared in our September 2026 Top of Mind Newsletter. Amar Bhidé taught entrepreneurship for 35 years at Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, and Tufts, and his 2000 study The Origin and Evolution of New Businesses remains one of the closest looks at how real companies get started. In this 40-minute talk at the Kansas City Public Library, he asks how anyone decides to act when the future can’t be calculated. His answer is imagination grounded in…

Originally shared in our September 2026 Top of Mind Newsletter. Owen Zidar (Princeton) and Eric Zwick (University of Chicago Booth) spent years working with U.S. tax data on business owners and found a large group of wealthy Americans most of us never think about. They own beer distributorships, HVAC companies, dental practices, and auto dealerships. By the authors’ count, there are 25 ultra-rich auto dealers for every member of the Forbes 400. Zidar suggests asking…

Originally shared in our August 2026 Top of Mind Newsletter. University of Pennsylvania professor, former president of the American Psychological Association, and founder of positive psychology Martin Seligman has created some of the most lasting foundations of modern psychology. His work on learned helplessness/optimism and human flourishing have been a guiding light for our own work of understanding entrepreneurial thinking and behavior beyond traditional business-oriented definitions. Now his latest book helps us unpack how humans…

Originally shared in our April 2026 Top of Mind Newsletter. Most of us believe that the path to getting better is to work harder at the things we do. Eduardo Briceño — growth mindset researcher, former CEO of Mindset Works, and one of the most-watched TED speakers on the science of learning — challenges that assumption directly. In The Performance Paradox, he makes the case that focusing exclusively on performing is actually what stalls our…

Opportunities are everywhere, yet they cannot always be seen with the untrained eye. Discovering these opportunities is something anyone can do, in virtually any set of circumstances. Whether you want to start a business or a side hustle, launch a non-profit, or advance your career, you can make valuable progress using the Opportunity Discovery Process. This is an overview of the process as it is described in The Entrepreneurial Mindset Advantage: The Hidden Logic that…