Building on Bedrock

From Startup Leadership author, global CEO, and entrepreneurship expert Derek Lidow comes the new, foundational guide to entrepreneurial success.

“Flat out, the best book on entrepreneurship I have ever read.” —Roger Martin, author of Creating Great Choices

Here’s an astounding fact: Over half the working population will try their hand at being an entrepreneur during their working career.

We all dream about achieving some combination of the fortune, fame, and control over our lives we associate with successful entrepreneurs. Those are admirable aspirations in a society that counts on entrepreneurs to innovate and create new jobs. Our work-driven culture encourages us to take the entrepreneurial bait, but how can you know whether being an entrepreneur will end as a dream come true or a nightmare from which you cannot wake?

Building on Bedrock helps answer that question. Based upon research, but told through the stories of American entrepreneurs Sam Walton, Walt Disney, Estée Lauder, Ray Kroc, and others, Building on Bedrock will help you understand the elements most essential to taking the entrepreneurial leap. Was it luck, talent, passion, charm, a rich uncle, or something else that was the key to this person’s success? Which might be the key to your success?

What you learn may surprise you.

Derek Lidow is one of the few New York Stock Exchange CEOs who left to start new companies from scratch—with unequivocal success. Lidow was CEO of International Rectifier, a $2 billion publicly held semiconductor company, before leaving to found iSuppli, a leading market research firm, which he sold for $100 million in 2010 to the global information leader IHS. Today, Lidow is giving back by teaching at Princeton University where he launched its campus-wide “design thinking” curriculum. He also works with Princeton’s aspiring entrepreneurs and their young companies.

Lidow has long demonstrated a rare ability to operate successfully in corporate, entrepreneurial, and academic environments. His novel contributions to research and analysis have forever improved companies as diverse as Sony, Samsung, Philips, Goldman Sachs and IBM. He has advised many of the world’s governments and largest companies. And he continues to drive innovation in research through ongoing projects with a number of partners.

Lidow is a frequent contributor to publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, and Entrepreneur. He is also a media commentator whose coverage includes The New York Times, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Forbes, The Economist, Nikkei, Reuters, and Taipei Times.

Lidow’s degrees come from Princeton and Stanford where he earned a PhD in applied physics as a Hertz Foundation Fellow. He is based in New York City and Princeton, NJ. DerekLidow.com