Inventors Insider

On the video jacket of Entrepreneurship: How to Start Your Own Company and Succeed, the opening volume in the six-part Inventors Insider series, viewers are told they will "learn the secrets to building a successful company, including how to develop your ideas, who to hire, and how to make a start-up profitable.” Unfortunately, the means to achieving those ends is 60 minutes of talking heads, backed with few visuals or even summaries of the main points being covered. While host Randy Notzen's guest, Astro Teller, the CEO of BodyMedia, is a highly articulate and intelligent man, his suggestions to entrepreneurs (do your research, plan, be flexible, etc.) could have easily been outlined in about 20 minutes instead of an hour--it's the verbal equivalent of mining a metric ton of ore for a gram of gold. To make matters worse, the poorly formatted program also suffers from substandard production qualities, particularly in the area of accurate color reproduction. The other titles in the series are: How to Safely Get Businesses to Finance Your Idea, The Game Plan on Making Money With Your Patent, How to Patent an Unusual Idea, Getting Started in the Patent Process and Patent Litigation: What's Involved and How to Avoid It. Given the breadth of the series alone (nearly five hours total), larger business libraries may want to consider; others will be better served by single volume titles such as I've Got a Great Idea (VL-11/93). Aud: H, C, P. (S. Fisher)