The book is an ambitious work. You should reach 70-80 pages.

⚠️Title page, summary, bibliography, blank pages not included… 15 font size, 3.0 line spaces, 50% images and graphs not tolerated…

⚪️ About

The subject should be around entrepreneurship. That said, we’re pretty open but you should try to connect it with entrepreneurship in some way.

Writing a book needs a few things :

• An extensive research about your subject. Your bibliography should be solid. You can have many resources : videos, articles, interviews, research papers, books, etc. We encourage not to forget the latter two. Ask the HEC Library for access one of the biggest research papers database in the world. Don't hesitate to contact them (biblio@hec.fr).
• An audience : who will be interested in writing this ? Reach out to your targeted audience and understand what they’re interested in, what they already know, what they don’t and how your work could be of value.
• An original subject : why would your target audience read it ? You should be writing something new : a new angle of the subject, a new methodology, a new perspective, the results of an original study, etc. Or you’re making it the reference book for anyone looking to further their knowledge in your subject, it’s pedagogy you’re selling. This second approach is far easier to fail…
• A good writing. It’s quite basic but no one will want to publish you if you have no style, write long and complex sentences or misspell 10 words per page…

⚪️ Methodology

• First, find a subject you like. If you have a start up, we highly encourage you to connect your subject to the start up. It’s best way to align your interest and make sure your production is valuable. Furthermore, you’re going to produce quite a lot of content, it’s the best way to make you or your start up shine as an expert of the subject. Your work could be used as white book, series of blog article, social networks posts, conferences you may host etc. Let all that work be useful for your start up.
• Second, find an angle. The best way to do this is to come up with a question whose answer is not straight forward and appear to be intellectually challenging.
• Third, find your mentor. A great mentor has relevant experience plus a lot of connections. We can help you with that (if you ask…).
• Fourth, deepen your knowledge in this field. Read, watch and most of all meet. Your work will be much more fun for you and your reader if we can see that you’ve been « on the field » talking to real persons. Don’t hesitate to say explicitly who you’ve meet and where. It will make your work more lively ! By the way, it’s ok for your reader to have fun reading your work… as long as it’s not the sole interest of reading it...
• Fifth, the structure should rise from all the notes you’ve taken from your research (and not the other way around).
• When you‘ve reached this point, you should be able to start writing.

⚪️ The role of the mentor

The mentor should be by your side throughout the process. He will be briefed by the administration about his role.

It’s pretty engaging, you should have at least 8 appointments with him. He will lead your research or even challenge your angle, help you meet interesting people, help you structure your work and proofread your work before submission.

You will be assessed by your mentor on the basis of your written paper and he is invited to your oral defense.

Mentors are paid by the program so it’s not something that should be taken lightly.

⚪️ The defense

After submitting your final paper to the administration, you will have an oral exam “viva” : your books‘ defense. It’s a presentation during which you will sum up your work in front of a jury, who will have previously read your work. This presentation will be graded.

The 5 best book will be nominated for the Best X-HEC Entrepreneurs Book award. They will do a ted talk like presentation in front of a final jury and the entire X-HEC Entrepreneurs class (N+1).

This awarded student will have his book published by « Les éditions Atlande ». Please keep in mind that being published is not an immediate process. The publishing house will ask you to rework on your book so that it’s better and adapted to publication.

You can find here all the books published previously.