Andrew Rowan's Startup Vietnam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Socialist Republic serves as almost a handbook to successfully navigating entrepreneurship in modern day Vietnam. In the first chapter of his book, Rowan uses lots of firsthand accounts to explain the current business environment in Vietnam and its growing economy. Vietnam is quoted to be "gearing up for the next transformation." As Vietnam has experienced rapid development over the past few decades, we see it moving up in the global economy and being one of the most entrepreneurial ecosystems in Southeast Asia at the moment. Ultimately, Rowan's main point of the book is to share how Vietnam is a prime location for startups to begin for all of its potential. However, he explains that when beginning to work in Vietnam, business owners must understand the kind of culture, environment, and hard work that is involved with creating a startup in Vietnam.
In my opinion, I think the book did seem quite repetitive yet still had a lot of valuable information as well as not-so-valuable but still interesting information. An example of this is his story of the "Great Rat Hunt" which occurred during French colonization. In fear of the bubonic plague, the French had Vietnamese hunters to search for and kill rats. Their wages would then be based on how many rats they killed. This story caught me off guard because I thought I was learning about entrepreneurship but then he explained the entrepreneurship of it. The hunters began to farm the rats in order to turn in their tails and receive compensation. Although it didn't quite align with modern day entrepreneurship in Vietnam, I thought this was a funny story to include.
Cited:
Rowan, Andrew. Startup Vietnam: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Socialist Republic. GKTA Group, 2018.
“Vietnam's Startup Ecosystem over 5 Years Reviewed.” THE VOICE OF VIETNAM, 26 Sept. 2017, vovworld.vn/en-US/news/vietnams-startup-ecosystem-over-5-years-reviewed-579272.vov.
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