Part 1: Getting Started

The authors begin with a deep dive into why choice matters, focusing on the initial choice to become an entrepreneur, the choice of which idea to pursue, and the choice of an overall strategy for a venture:

Part 2: Core Choices

Next, the authors focus on four clusters of choices that are central to the founding and scaling of a venture. These choices exist around:

Part 3: Four Strategies: How Choices Work Together

The book matches key complementary choices to create four different strategies for start-ups that entrepreneurs can explore for a given idea:

Each of these strategies reflects a distinctive set of choices of customer, technology, organization, and competition and highlights specific interconnected factors that entrepreneurs can exploit in translating their idea into a viable company.

Part 4: Putting It to Work

Once entrepreneurs are equipped with the tools to translate an idea into reality, these three chapters help them explore building a venture with a foundation for long-term viability, which are focused on:

One at a time, these chapters show students how to choose a strategy, enable it, and possibly decide to grow and scale a business.