Venture capitalists are having a confidence crisis as dwindling exit opportunities and a weak economy conspire to put the kibosh on returns. According to the Silicon Valley Venture Capital Confidence Index the second quarter registered a reading of 3.07 on a 5 point scale, down from the...
In the midst of all the red ink, layoffs, buyouts, stock crashes, and disppearing advertising revenue plaguing the newspaper industry, some companies are making fast, smart changes that suggest a brighter future. Leading the way is The New York Times. While so other media execs are lengthening...
When Vivian Frankel was organizing a conference to help other stay-at-home mothers establish and grow their own home-based businesses, she made sure that counselor Jerry Earle of Los Angeles SCORE was on the agenda. Vivian called on Earle SCORE counselor for help in morphing her conference concept into a website...
Labanz is the founder, owner and artistic director of The Delicate Pen, which provides high-end calligraphy products for weddings and other special events. To occupy her time while working as a "Booth singer" off stage, Labanz began doing calligraphy after admiring the beauty of the art while leafing through a...
Frustration. That's how Adonis Paz described his situation at a New Orleans area rent-to-own business. He had worked in the industry for six years, and was confident that he could be a manager for his company. But as hard as he tried, a promotion always seemed elusive. Though eager to...
It takes an entrepreneurial fire in your belly to start a business - and make it succeed - and not everyone has it. How do you know if you have what it takes to start a business? There's really no way to know for sure. But the author does find...
This paper explores the effects of presence of unions on the performance of entrepreneurial firms in the mid-1990s (both at the initial public offering IPO and after the event). The article also describes that union bargaining power in the highly competitive environment of entrepreneurial firms is limited, and therefore, the...
Presenting a comprehensive business plan when you seek financial backing for a start-up enterprise may seem a daunting task, but this in-depth planning workbook from MasterCard Working™ can demystify the process. From writing a cover letter to crafting a detailed business description and accurately assessing your competition, this hands-on business...
In this template the process of developing an entrepreneurial opportunity into a new operating business is divided into tasks and scheduled in logical sequence. The template may be customized to be used for a wide range of specific business situations. The objective of this template is to help you in...
Just when it looked like nothing could eclipse pharmaceutical costs, Harvard Pilgrim Health Plan found a new cost generator sneaking up - diagnostic imaging - which was increasing an average of 25% a year over the past few years. The paper informs that the rise in the number of freestanding,...
It takes an entrepreneurial fire in your belly to start a business - and make it succeed - and not everyone has it. How do you know if you have what it takes to start a business? There's really no way to know for sure. But there are few things...
Business coaches were once considered a blessing for senior executives at multinational corporations. However, nowadays coaches are even found at entrepreneurial start-ups and small businesses. Business coaching is a vital and very powerful business performance tool. With regards to competition, business and sports are extremely similar. In business, a number...
I'm attending the Nantucket Conference, where the East Coast entrepreneurial community gathers to talk about the state of the business. It's all off the record though I can negotiate to post specific comments with the speakers. Perhaps because of that, the conference has a kind of intimacy that's unusual...
Most managers would scoff at the idea that they are entrepreneurial --- entrepreneurs are guys creating new businesses from their garages --- aren't they? Actually an entrepreneur is anyone who takes a risk in creating something from nothing. While typically part of a new enterprise or a...
Who is likely to motivate another person to become an entrepreneur? Friends? Family? Mentors? Interesting new research out of Harvard Business School suggests a key influence on would-be entrepreneurs are co-workers who themselves have had entrepreneurial experience. According to professor Ramana Nanda in an...
Smells like Entrepreneurial SpiritEntrepreneurs are like diamondsIn my manufacturing environment, probably less than one in a thousand people have any real creative drive. Where we have tried the laissez-faire approach around 10% see it as a chance to increase department budgets, 5% see it as a "look at me I...
So, you're an executive inside a media company and you wonder how to encourage the people who report to you "to think like entrepreneurs." Your success as a manager will be at least partly judged by how many good ideas your department or division delivers upstairs. I've...
Trading in dead bodies and body parts probably isn't a glamorous profession--some might even view it as ethically squishy and, for many of us, emotionally squeamish. But in our current way of teaching medicine, cadavers are a necessary training resource. They have to be procured from somewhere,...
A handy compendium of websites, resources and references valuable for entrepreneurs to jump start a new venture or to drive innovation and growth in existing organizations.
