Backed by a loyal following, SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT: LAUNCHING AND GROWING ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURES, 14e, continues to lead the market. With its comprehensive approach, precedent-setting coverage, innovative tools, real-world emphasis, and superior package, SBM remains an unparalleled resource for shaping future generations of small business owners and entrepreneurs. An excellent resource for small business management, entrepreneurship, and hybrid courses (especially with our custom options), SBM combines fundamentals of business management with an emphasis on teaching aspiring business owners not only how to start a business but also how to manage, grow, and harvest one--the full business cycle. Featuring an integrated learning system, SBM continues to place emphasis on the business plan, offering many ways to assign it. Through mini cases, comprehensive cases, text exercises, and online activities, students are put in the role of decision maker to sharpen their understanding of chapter concepts. SBM also captures the excitement of small business with multimedia tools such as "Small Business School" video cases, online case analysis, and the Small Business Resource Center's robust collection of relevant articles. It's no wonder that SBM is the book that students retain long after the course is over.

Justin G. Longenecker's authorship of this book began with the first edition. He also authored a number of other books as well as numerous articles in journals such as JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, BUSINESS HORIZONS, and JOURNAL OF BUSINESS ETHICS. President of the International Council for Small Business, he was active in a number of professional organizations. Dr. Longenecker grew up in a family business and attended Central Christian College of Kansas for two years. He earned his bachelor's degree in political science from Seattle Pacific University, his MBA from The Ohio State University, and his PhD from the University of Washington. He taught at Baylor University, where he was Emeritus Chavanne Professor of Christian Ethics in Business until his death in 2005.Carlos W. Moore taught at Baylor University for more than 35 years. He was honored as a Distinguished Professor by the Hankamer School of Business, where he taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in marketing research and consumer behavior until his death in 2007. Dr. Moore's work has been published in the JOURNAL OF SMALL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT, JOURNAL OF BUSINESS ETHICS, ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS, ACCOUNTING HORIZONS, and JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTANCY, among others. His authorship of this textbook began with its sixth edition. Dr. Moore received an associate arts degree from Navarro Junior College in Corsicana, Texas, where he was later named Ex-Student of the Year. He earned a BBA from The University of Texas at Austin with a major in accounting, an MBA from Baylor University, and a PhD from Texas A&M University.J. William Petty is Professor of Finance and the W.W. Caruth Chairholder in Entrepreneurship at Baylor University, where he has been designated a Master Teacher. His primary teaching responsibilities are in the areas of entrepreneurial finance and entrepreneurial start-ups. Dr. Petty also has held faculty positions at Virginia Tech University and Texas Tech University and has served as dean of the business school at Abilene Christian University. He has taught entrepreneurship and small business courses in China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Thailand, and Russia; and his research interests include acquisitions of privately held companies, shareholder value-based management, the financing of small and entrepreneurial firms, and exit strategies for privately held firms. He has served as coeditor of the JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL RESEARCH and editor of the JOURNAL OF ENTREPRENEURIAL AND SMALL BUSINESS FINANCE. He also has published articles in a number of finance journals and is a coauthor of a leading corporate finance textbook, FOUNDATIONS OF FINANCE. As a consultant for oil and gas firms and consumer product companies, he serves as the audit chair for a publicly traded energy firm. He served as a subject matter expert on a best-practices study by the American Productivity and Quality Center on the topic of shareholder value-based management, and he worked on a research team for the Australian Department of Industry to study the feasibility of establishing a public equity market for small- and medium-size enterprises in Australia. He holds a PhD and an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin and a BS from Abilene Christian University.Leslie E. (Les) Palich is Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship and the Ben H. Williams Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baylor University, where he teaches courses in small business management, international entrepreneurship, strategic management, and international management to undergraduate and graduate students in the Hankamer School of Business. He also is Associate Director of the Entrepreneurship Studies program at Baylor. He holds a PhD and an MBA from Arizona State University and a BA from Manhattan Christian College. His research has been published in the ACADEMY OF MANAGEMENT REVIEW, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, JOURNAL OF BUSINESS VENTURING, JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES, JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, JOURNAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR, and several other journals. He has taught entrepreneurship and strategic management in a number of overseas settings, including Cuba, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the Dominican Republic. His interest in entrepreneurial opportunity and small business management dates back to his grade school years, when he set up a produce sales business to experiment with small business ownership. That early experience became a springboard for a number of other enterprises. Since that time, he has owned and operated domestic ventures in agribusiness, automobile sales, real estate development, and educational services and an international import business.

PART I: ENTREPRENEURSHIP: A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITY. 1. The Entrepreneurial Life. 2. Entrepreneurial Integrity and Ethics: A Gateway to Small Business Opportunity. PART II: STARTING FROM SCRATCH OR JOINING AN EXISTING BUSINESS. 3. Getting Started. 4. Franchises and Buyouts. 5. The Family Business. PART III: DEVELOPING THE NEW VENTURE BUSINESS PLAN. 6. The Business Plan. 7. The Marketing Plan. 8. The Organizational Plan: Teams, Legal Forms, and Strategic Alliances. 9. The Location Plan. 10. The Financial Plan: Projecting Financial Requirements. 11. A Firm's Sources of Financing. 12. The Harvest Plan. PART IV: FOCUSING ON THE CUSTOMER: MARKETING GROWTH STRATEGIES. 13. Building Customer Relationships. 14. Product and Supply Chain Management. 15. Pricing and Credit Decisions. 16. Promotional Planning. 17. Global Marketing. PART V: MANAGING GROWTH IN THE SMALL BUSINESS. 18. Professional Management in the Entrepreneurial Firm. 19. Managing Human Resources. 20. Managing Operations. 21. Managing Risk. PART VI: UNDERSTANDING WHAT THE NUMBERS MEAN. 22. Managing the Firm's Assets. 23. Evaluating Financial Performance.