Ideas beget ideas. This adage captures both the genesis of this book and its central theme. It all began when Avijit Ghosh, then Director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stern School of Business, New York University, called to ask if we would be interested in exploring entrepreneurship using a technology lens. Having already spent time exploring the notion of oversights and foresights, we quickly decided that exploring entrepreneurship through a technology lens would be a fruitful endeavor, especially if it were to be a cross-disciplinary one.

Deciding to put together a collection of thought-provoking ideas on this subject, we contacted many leading thinkers from several disciplines. We were gratified by the overwhelmingly enthusiastic response. Rather than ask each author to contribute independently, we concluded that it would be productive to organize a workshop where ideas could generate ideas.

To emphasize the multidisciplinary nature of the phenomenon, we organized the workshop by major “disciplines” that we had identified (technology, marketing, decision making, organizational processes and strategy). Our strategy was to bring together leading thinkers in each of these disciplines and ask them to present their ideas at the workshop so that contributors could get a more holistic perspective. We wanted each participant to have an opportunity to benefit from this cross-pollination process. Consequently, we decided to hold each presentation sequentially. In addition to the presenters, each session had a chairperson and a discussant. We requested discussants to address papers contained in each session both individually and collectively. We kept the task of integrating the papers across disciplines to ourselves.