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Poland has a rich entrepreneurial potential-a potential it is realizing on a large scale. At the same time, educational opportunities are opening up for enterprising business leaders seeking to start their own firms. Polish academics and business people understand that some aspects of entrepreneurship can be taught, and have taken steps to provide programs and short courses emphasizing start-ups. A series of interviews were undertaken in 1998 and 1999 with business people, academics, consultants, and government officials on the subject of entrepreneurship in Poland to determine what specific business tools and concepts were most important to aspiring and practicing Polish entrepreneurs, and how these subjects should be taught. The findings are summarized in this article.

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Over the past 60 years the internal rate of return (IRR) has become a major tool in investment evaluation. Many executives prefer it to net present value (NPV), presumably because they can more easily comprehend a percentage measure. This article demonstrates that, except in the rare case of an investment that is followed by a single cash return, IRR suffers from a definitional quandary. Is it an intrinsic measure, defined only in terms of itself, or is it defined by the efforts of active investors? Additionally, the article explains significant problems with the measure - reinvestment issues, multiple IRRs, timing problems, problems of choice among unequal investment opportunities, and practical difficulties with multiple discount rates. IRR is a blind guide because its definition is in doubt and because of its many practical problems.

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