David E. Gumpert

ORDERING BOOKS

The most direct way to order my most recent books is to go direct to Amazon from the links on the home page and on this page. These books are available at other online bookstores, like bn.com, as well as (hopefully) at regular bookstores like Barnes & Noble.

If you are a bookstore manager or someone else who wants to order my business books in quantity, check with the books' distributor, Independent Publishers Group for details.
To obtain information on ordering Inge in quantity, please contact the publisher, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing for details.

I recently wrote a lengthy feature article for The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine about the controversy over the growing consumption of raw milk. I examined the history and science around milk, along with trends in Massachusetts mirroring national trends.

I've written several articles about food and nutrition for The Nation. My most recent one is about a crackdown on small dairies trying to become sustainable by producing raw milk.

I've launched a new BusinessWeek.com column--a bi-weekly segment with trends, tips, and book reviews useful (hopefully) to startup entrepreneurs. Links to the most recent couple are listed below. It's titled "What Entrepreneurs Need to Know".

Here are excerpts from my interview with Dr. Andrew Weil about his challenges being an entrepreneur. (The excerpts are 4-5 minutes each; my apologies for presenting the interview in three segments, but that is the best I could do with limitations of this web site's software.) My recent column on BusinessWeek.com is based partly on the interview. (A link to the interview is shown immediately after the interview links.)

Maybe it's because I'm an aging Baby Boomer, but I have become increasingly interested in health care and, more specifically, the business of health care. I've written some articles on BusinessWeek.com about this subject, and I've launched a blog as well.

Over the past decade, when I haven't been writing books and columns about small business and entrepreneurship, I've been researching my family's history during the Holocaust. I was prompted by the discovery in 1993 of a 66-page recollection my aunt had written about her experiences trying to escape the Nazis. The actual story of her coming of age, falling in love, and standing up to the Nazis turned into a 300-plus page memoir, Inge, that came out in April 2004 (published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing), and is on sale at Amazon (link directly by clicking on the cover or the text below the cover, to the left).

A recent newspaper article described the background of Inge and why I was driven to complete the long project.

Some comments about "Inge: A Girl's Journey Through Nazi Europe":

“Poignant and powerful...”
Michael Berenbaum, former director, Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Museum

“…an absorbing, unsentimental narrative that combines relief of survival with the melancholy of memory.”
Lawrence Langer, author Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory

“…a moving portrait of a young Jewish girl’s amazing journey of survival through Nazi Europe, and a page-turner to boot.”
Iris Posner, Co-editor, Don’t Wave Goodbye

What should startup entrepreneurs focus on most strongly if the business plan is no longer as key as it once was? I am asked that question frequently, and in this new interview at "What's Working in Biz" I provide some answers.

Outsourcing of American jobs is one of the most divisive economic problems to confront the U.S. in recent years. While we tend to associate the issue with major corporations, it is at the small-company level that we see innovative approaches to the issue and begin to appreciate its most important ramifications. I've devoted several of my latest Growing Concerns columns at BusinessWeek.com to profiling various of small-company approaches.

The column focuses on challenges confronting smaller companies stemming from economic, social, political, and other current trends. It is published every three weeks. Here are links to recent ones:

The Boston Globe last spring used Burn Your Business Plan! to take a critical view of business plan contest in an article that quoted the book's research to question whether business plan contests are the best way for entrepreneurs to raise money.

In a BusinessWeek.com article, I provided further thoughts about why business plan contests are more sizzle than steak. The head of one of the contests I highlighted responded with a different view.

I presented research used as the basis of Burn Your Business Plan! at the largest gathering of entrepreneurship researchers--the annual Babson Kauffman Entrepreneurship Research Conference June 5-7 at Babson College in Wellesley, MA. The title of the paper was "Do Business Plans Matter? How Venture Capitalists Evaluate Entrepreneurs for Investment." My co-author for the paper was Julian Lange, an associate professor of entrepreneurship at Babson. You can view the abstract on the My Works page. For a copy of the full paper, email me at david@davidgumpert.com.

Here's a first-hand view of the role of the business plan...in my own company. This article was published in January 2003 on EntreWorld, a web resource for entrepreneurs sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and then reprinted by BusinessWeek.com.

Here's an excerpt from a review of Burn Your Business Plan! in the March issue of Entrepreneur Magazine: "(Gumpert) says, a traditional business plan provides only moderate value...And writing a plan, he warns, can distract entrepreneurs from sales, production, hiring and other important tasks. In the end, the convroversial thesis convinces...You may not burn your plan after reading Gumpert's latest, but you'll see it differently."

After I recovered from prostate cancer surgery, I decided to write about the challenge of deciding on a course of treatment. Here's my first-person account, in a Boston Magazine article.