The Entrepreneurship Research Playbook translates the latest academic research on entrepreneurship into practical insights for founders, entrepreneurs, and small business owners. Drawing exclusively on peer-reviewed studies published in 2025, the book explains what research actually says about strategy, funding, digital transformation, resilience, and entrepreneurial decision-making.
You are bombarded with confident advice, survival bias, and 'hustle' culture narratives. But what actually works?
This book was born from a realisation: A bridge is missing between what scholars know and what entrepreneurs need.
While you are solving problems like funding, burnout, and pivoting, thousands of researchers are studying those exact problems.
Their findings are usually locked in academic journals. Until now.
Why does most business advice feel like it was written for someone else?
If you are a founder, a consultant, or sitting in the C-suite of a growing startup, you know the feeling.
You read the bestsellers and follow the "hero founders" on LinkedIn. They tell you to "fail fast," "pivot hard," and "sleep when you're dead." It sounds inspiring.
But when Monday morning arrives and you are facing a cash-flow crunch, a team approaching burnout, or an investor demanding an AI strategy by Friday, that generic advice is useless.
The problem isn't you. The problem is the "Knowledge Gap."
The vast majority of entrepreneurship advice you consume is based on:
* Survivorship Bias: Listening only to the 1% who succeeded, ignoring the 99% who did the same things and failed.
* Outdated Anecdotes: Strategies that worked in 2015 but are irrelevant in the economic reality of 2026.
* Simplified Narratives: Reducing complex human and market dynamics to catchy slogans.
You are operating one of the most complex machines ever devised—a new business—using an outdated manual.
The Answers Exist. You Just Haven't Seen Them. Yet.
While LinkedIn influencers are posting platitudes, thousands of brilliant researchers globally are doing the actual work.
In universities, scholars are rigorously studying the exact problems you face daily: founder psychology, digital transformation risks, signaling credibility to investors, and navigating crises.
In 2025 alone, hundreds of peer-reviewed studies on entrepreneurship were published.
Where is this knowledge?
It is locked behind expensive paywalls in academic journals, written in dense, impenetrable language. It is totally inaccessible to the people who need it most: You.
The 2025 Entrepreneurship Research Playbook is the bridge.
We have done the heavy lifting. Hundreds of the latest papers have been analyzed and translated them into a practical, actionable manual for founders and practitioners. This is not theory. This is academic research on entrepreneurship in 2025, decoded for the real world.
Chapter 1: The Entrepreneur’s Cognition, Psychology, and Well-being
It’s not just about "grit." Learn how Psychological Capital (HERO)—Hope, Efficacy, Resilience, and Optimism—actually drives performance. Key Insight: Why "passion" can sometimes be a liability to investors.
Chapter 2: The Strategy of Small and Medium Enterprises
Move beyond "business plans." Understand how imprinting legacies from your past shape your startup’s future and how to use experimentation as disciplined learning, not random trial-and-error.
Chapter 3: Digital Transformation and AI
Navigate the "Ideator's Dilemma": How to use GenAI without falling for "hallucinations of competence". Learn why digital transformation is about "cognitive readiness," not just buying software.
Chapter 4: Finance and Funding Mechanisms
Finance is a signaling game. Learn what investors really look for in 2025. Key Insight: Why "honest incompetence" is a risk and how to signal credibility in crowdfunding vs. VC.
Chapter 5: Sustainability, Social Enterprise, and Ethics
How to run a mission-driven business without suffering from "mission drift". Understanding the tension between profit and impact.
Chapter 6: Crises and Resilience
Resilience isn't just "bouncing back"—it's about how you interpret time and opportunity when the world breaks.
Chapter 7: Gender and Identity
Navigating the "legitimacy gap". How women and minority founders can strategically navigate systems built on "hero founder" stereotypes.
Each chapter ends with a diagnostic tool to help you assess your venture immediately.
"I never planned to write a book about entrepreneurship. My intellectual home was public policy. But after convening the MBA 30 program for about 200 entrepreneurs in partnership with Black British Initiative, I realised that founders were asking precise, urgent questions that research could answer."
Dr Alberto Asquer
Alberto Asquer is a Reader in Public Policy and Management at SOAS University of London
