The Blackstone LaunchPad is Syracuse University’s innovation hub, connecting the campus ecosystem with a global network that supports innovators, entrepreneurs and creatives. The specialized Blackstone LaunchPad Entrepreneurship Book Collection is a small subcollection of the many entrepreneurship and innovation related books available via Syracuse University Libraries. Entrepreneurship and innovation books beyond the ones listed here may be found by searching in Summon and the Classic Catalog.
The Blackstone LaunchPad Entrepreneurship Book Collection started with a core list of titles frequently recommended by Blackstone LaunchPad Executive Director Linda Dickerson Hartsock to aspiring student entrepreneurs. Linda then crowdsourced book suggestions on multidisciplinary topics related to innovation and entrepreneurship from faculty, staff, and students across many academic programs and disciplines. Librarian for Business, Management, and Entrepreneurship Stephanie JH McReynolds selected and ordered relevant titles for the collection as well. Early on in its creation, the idea for the collection won the Judges’ Prize at the inaugural Charleston Conference Fast Pitch Competition, an international gathering of librarians, publishers, electronic resource managers and vendors of library materials.
Many thanks to former Syracuse University Libraries' Research Reputation Graduate Assistant Ashley N. Downs for transforming the PDF title and author version of this list into a dynamic guide featuring book covers, book descriptions, links to each book's catalog record and ebook version (when available), as well as for arranging the over 300 book titles into easy-to-browse subject lists.
The collection continues to grow every year, and certain titles have been adopted as suggested reading by faculty teaching entrepreneurship and related subjects. The print books in this collection are located on the shelves just outside the LaunchPad, while ebook versions of many titles are available to read from anywhere.
The subject lists include both the print and ebook versions (if available) of each title.
Note: The book descriptions are based on publisher-provided descriptions. While we are editing the descriptions for length, spelling and grammatical errors, as well as tall claims such as, "the only business book you will ever need," this is a time-intensive process. Thanks for your patience as we work through the list. We thought it was more important to get the list out to people in a user-friendly format than to wait until each description had been edited.
The Business Information Guide and the Business & Entrepreneurship Databases List serve as starting points for entrepreneurship and business research.
When working towards contributing to a more just, equitable, and inclusive society, entrepreneurs should consider perspectives from inside and outside the business realm. The Equity, Diversity, Accessibility, and Inclusion guide and the Resources for Racial Justice guide serve as starting points for learning more about equity, diversity, accessibility, inclusion, and anti-racism.