Monte Carlo Risk Analysis and Due Diligence of New Business Ventures (With CD-ROM)

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Summary: Wright clearly explains Monte Carlo analyses of businesses.
Review: As a VC (Venture Capitalist), I am always seeking better methods to analyze investment opportunities. Jim Wright's book takes that analysis to the next level. Monte Carlo simulation techniques have repeatedly proven their value in addressing some of the world's most complex problems. Unfortunately, the technique is inherently very compute intensive, until now placing its use beyond the reach of most business analysis. A combination of Moore's law, and Wright's very clever unsymmetrical Gaussangular DistributionsTM, now permit ordinary PC/spreadsheet users to employ this very powerful tool.

Wright has distilled his many years of field experience into an easily followed, step-by-step, approach to providing very insightful statistical evaluations of complex technical projects. Implementation is facilitated by ready-to-use software and support included on a CD with the book. Monte Carlo Risk Analysis is not only suitable for the most complex problems; it can very usefully be applied to most any business analysis. Within the context of VC investments in speculative, new technologies, Wright's book provides a very potent approach to identifying and quantifying the metrics for success. I highly recommend Wright's book to anybody analyzing business ventures.

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Summary: Uniquely quantifies the risk associated with investments.
Review: While, for many decades, simulation has been the most commonly used technique available for risk analysis of a variety of complex systems, its meaningful popularity, outside engineering and the sciences, has only started to build. James Wright's book provides a comprehensive guide to the application of the Monte Carlo simulation tool as a means of uniquely quantifying the risk associated with any technical investment project. Even though Wright's book specifically addresses the most complex case of evaluating "technical projects" the process is readily applicable to evaluate high-tech and other investment projects.

In Part I, Wright's innovative method of presenting technical due diligence, with its step-by-step approach to building a complex system, contains several practical examples. It is an excellent introduction to the use of Monte Carlo simulation to a broader audience with common interests in venture capital. In Part II, he covers different commonly used discrete and continuous random variables with relevant examples. In this part, Wright's extensive reviews of triangular and angular random distributions, and their applications in analyzing risk for technical projects, provide a helpful approach to simplify the application of the Monte Carlo simulation in other areas. Several user-friendly computer files in an accompanying CD offer opportunities to quickly simulate different systems.

Monte Carlo Risk Analysis and Due Diligence of New Business Ventures is an excellent reference for MBA programs with a concentration in finance, entrepreneurship, and technology management.