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About the Authors

John A Tracy
is Professor of Accounting, Emeritus, in the College of Business and Administration at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Before his 35-year tenure at Boulder he was on the business faculty for four years at the University of California in Berkeley. He has served as staff accountant at Ernst & Young and is the author of several books on accounting, including
The Fast Forward MBA in Finance
and
How To Read a Financial Report
. Dr Tracy received his MBA and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin and is a CPA in Colorado.

Colin Barrow
is Head of the Enterprise Group at Cranfield School of Management, where he teaches entrepreneurship on the MBA and other programmes. He is also a visiting professor at business schools in the US, Asia, France, and Austria. His books on entrepreneurship and small business have been translated into fifteen languages including Russian and Chinese. He worked with Microsoft to incorporate the business planning model used in his teaching programmes into the software program, Microsoft Business Planner, now bundled with Office. He is a regular contributor to newspapers, periodicals, and academic journals such as
The Financial Times
,
The Guardian
,
Management Today
, and the
International Small Business Journal
.

Thousands of students have passed through Colin's start-up and business growth programmes, raising millions in new capital and going on to run successful and thriving enterprises. He is a non-executive director of two venture capital funds, on the board of several small businesses, and serves on a number of Government Task Forces.

Authors' Acknowledgments

From John:
I'm deeply grateful to everyone at the publishers who helped produce this book. Their professionalism and their unfailing sense of humour and courtesy were much appreciated. I supplied some raw materials (words), and then the outstanding editors moulded them into the finished product. Out of the blue, I got a call one day from Kathy Welton. Kathy asked if I'd be interested in doing this book. It didn't take me very long to say yes. She can be very persuasive, and she certainly knows her stuff. Thank you, Kathy! I can't say enough nice things about Pam Mourouzis, who worked with me as project editor on the first edition of the book. The book is immensely better for her insights and advice. Pam started out as an accounting ‘dummy', and she's now an accounting ‘smartie'. The two copy editors on the book, Diane Giangrossi and Joe Jansen, made innumerable corrections and suggestions which were extraordinarily helpful. You two should also take a bow, I sincerely thank you. Also, Mark Butler gave me the right nudge back then when I needed it. Mary Metcalfe provided invaluable comments and suggestions on the manuscript as it worked its way through the development process. I don't know Mary personally, but in my mind's eye she is one tough cookie!

I thank Holly McGuire and Jill Alexander for encouraging me to revise the book. The second edition has benefited greatly from the editing by Norm Crampton and Ben Nussbaum. They were extraordinarily helpful in revising the book. Both these gentlemen know their business, that's for sure! I also appreciate their unfailing good humour in working with me on the revision. In short, it has been my great privilege and pleasure to work with the publishing team on this book. I couldn't have done it without them.

Also, I owe a debt of gratitude to a faculty colleague at Boulder, an accomplished author in his own right, Professor Ed Gac. He offered very sage advice. Ed was always ready with a word of encouragement when I needed one, and I'm very appreciative.

I often think about why I like to write books. I believe it goes back to an accounting class in my undergraduate days at Creighton University in Omaha. In a course taught by the Dean of the Business School, Dr Floyd Walsh, I turned in a term paper and he said that it was very well written. I have never forgotten that compliment. I think he would be proud of this book.

From Colin:
I would like to thank everyone at Wiley Publishing, especially Jason Dunne, Daniel Mersey, Samantha Clapp, and Steve Edwards for the opportunity to write this book, as well as for their help, encouragement, feedback, and tireless work to make this all happen.

Dedication