See, Solve, Scale: How Anyone Can Turn an Unsolved Problem into a Breakthrough Success

Warshay (Nelson Ctr. for Entrepreneurship, Brown Univ.) argues here that entrepreneurship is “a structured process for solving problems,” or what he calls “unmet needs”. His book presents a systematic process of entrepreneurship—“See”; “Solve”; and “Scale”—enlivened by cases and anecdotes. The first, and in some ways the most difficult, step of Warshay’s method is identifying a problem. He stresses the importance of “bottom-up research”: open-minded, intense observation of the targeted groups of potential customers as they go about their daily tasks, supplemented by asking open-ended questions to encourage self-reflection. Warshay is against surveys and focus groups and argues that they are contrived and thus do not help identify actual unmet needs or unsolved problems of potential customers. The second step of his method, “Solve,” means creating a product or service to clear up the problem; third is “Scaling,” which allows one to solve the problem for many people over a long period of time. This book presents techniques for each of the three steps.