April 16 is World Entrepreneurship Day, and Small Business Month is just on the horizon, in May! Join us in celebrating this occasion by browsing this list of six great Penn Press books about entrepreneurship, including three from our in-house imprint Wharton School Press. Plus, save 40% when you buy any of them using code PENN-WED2025 at checkout!
Unstoppable Entrepreneurs: 7 Paths for Unleashing Successful Startups and Creating Value through Innovation
Lori Rosenkopf
Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur with a groundbreaking idea, a seasoned business owner looking to scale, or an employee seeking to drive innovation within your organization, this essential read will challenge your assumptions, unleash your entrepreneurial potential, and inspire you to make your mark in the world.
Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit
Kendra D. Boyd
Freedom Enterprise follows Black Southerners’ journeys to Detroit during the initial wave of migration in the 1910s and 1920s, and from their efforts to build a prosperous Black business community in the 1930s and 1940s to the destruction of that community through urban renewal projects and freeway construction in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Unicorn’s Shadow: Combating the Dangerous Myths that Hold Back Startups, Founders, and Investors
Ethan Mollick
In The Unicorn’s Shadow, Wharton School professor Ethan Mollick takes us to the forefront of an empirical revolution in entrepreneurship. New data and better research methods have overturned the conventional wisdom behind what a successful founder looks like, how they succeed, and how the startup ecosystem works.
Creative Urbanity: An Italian Middle Class in the Shade of Revitalization
Emanuela Guano
Based on more than a decade of ethnographic research in Genoa, Italy, Creative Urbanity argues for an understanding of contemporary urban life that refuses scholarly condemnation of urban lifestyles and consumption and casts a fresh light on an oft-neglected social group—the middle class.
The Social Entrepreneur’s Playbook, Expanded Edition Pressure Test, Plan, Launch and Scale Your Social Enterprise
Ian C. MacMillan and James D. Thompson
Wharton professor Ian C. MacMillan and Dr. James Thompson, director of the Wharton Social Entrepreneurship Program, provide a tough-love approach that significantly increases the likelihood of a successful social enterprise launch in the face of the high-uncertainty conditions typically encountered by social entrepreneurs.
Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs How One Banana-Exporting Country Achieved Worldwide Reach
Douglas Southgate and Lois Roberts
Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs focuses on the role played by local growers and exporters in Ecuador, which has been the world’s leading banana exporter for more than sixty years without ever being dominated by foreign corporations.
