Navigating Our Lives, Our Economy, Our World with the Cellphone,

The cellphone has been a basic tool of micro-enterprise in numerous countries for sometime now. On a local level, it provides a relatively cheap means of communication, organization and control. Now it is beginning to create a new paradigm on a global scale. Two articles, again from the New York Times, provide a contrast between the potential of world connection and the realities of global markets, one although abstract is becoming a reality, the other a reality could change how we think about doing business.

SCIENCE | February 17, 2009 The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives By JOHN MARKOFF
Cellphones have changed how we communicate with others, and now they are changing how we think about information.

The cellphone is the world’s most ubiquitous computer. The four billion cellphones in use around the globe carry personal information, provide access to the Web and are being used more and more to navigate the real world. And as cellphones change how we live, computer scientists say, they are also changing how we think about information.

With the dominance of the cellphone, a new metaphor is emerging for how we organize, find and use information. New in one sense, that is. It is also as ancient as humanity itself. That metaphor is the map. “The map underlies man’s ability to perceive,” said Richard Saul Wurman, a graphic designer who was a pioneer in the use of maps as a generalized way to search for information of all kinds before the emergence of the online world.

TECHNOLOGY | April 28, 2009 In China, Knockoff Cellphones Are a Hit By DAVID BARBOZA
An industry building look-alike mobile phones for as little as $35 is tickling China's pride in rebellious creativity.

“Five years ago, there were no counterfeit phones,” says Xiong Ting, a sales manager at Triquint Semiconductor, a maker of mobile phone parts, while visiting Shenzhen. “You needed a design house. You needed software guys. You needed hardware design. But now, a company with five guys can do it. Within 100 miles of here, you can find all your suppliers.”

Even Chinese mobile phone producers are losing market share to underground companies, which have a built-in cost advantage because they evade taxes, regulatory fees and safety checks.

There are environmental dangers posed by this black market technology, but their is also a sense of backroom disruptive innovation going on as well.

Some experts say they believe the shanzhai phenomena is about being creative, Chinese style.

“Chinese grass-roots companies are actually very innovative,” says Yu Zhou, a professor at Vassar College. “It’s not so much technology as how they form supply chains and how rapidly they react to new trends.”

Related Posts:

• Being There, Being Everywhere, Being Where It Counts
• Even In A Digital World It Takes Real Heart To Make Change
• Unplanned Obsolescence
• Innovation, Disruptive Milestones for the New Millennium
• Combining Efforts, Connecting People - Nokia and Pangea Day Work on a Paradigm Shift
• World changing paradigm shifts come from all directions

The Long Tail - Stretching to make Free Profitable

One of the economic concepts explored previously by this website is that of the Long Tail. It is one of a number of concepts being studied in an attempt to understand how sustainable development and businesses might function. If businesses do not maximize profits by selling with exclusivity to their richest clients or mass marketing to the fairly affluent middle and lower classes, how to they keep in business? Is there a "market" to be found at the bottom billion or does that require a non-ending program of government handouts whether at the local or global level? Bottom-line question can a business model be created out of giving things away for free?

CHRIS ANDERSON, the editor in chief of Wired magazine, and the author of "The Long Tail" and "Free," which will be published in July, explores the concept of The Economics of Giving It Away in this WSJ.com article.

In a battered economy, free goods and services online are more attractive than ever. So how can the suppliers make a business model out of nothing?

Related Posts:

• Surviving Ideaicide And Other Perils Of The New Economy
• Can Any Of This Make A Difference?
  
• Riding the Long Tail

Innovation versus Idiots How to stay on the right road

Still catching up with some of the older pending posts in my draft bin. Found some from Harvard Business Publishing, especially this one by Bill Taylor.

The article of particular interest was Wisdom of Warren Buffett: On Innovators, Imitators, and Idiots in which he provides a hour-long television interview with Buffett in which he talks about the "natural progression" of how good new ideas go wrong. The "three I's":

1. Innovators, who see opportunities that others don't.
2. Imitators, who copy what the innovators have done.
3. Idiots, whose avarice undoes the very innovations they are trying to use to get rich.

Taylor tells us that, the problem, in other words, isn't with innovation -- it's with the idiocy that follows.

So how do we as individuals (not to mention as companies and societies) continue to embrace the value-creating upside of creativity while guarding against the value-destroying downsides of imitation? The answer, it seems to me, is about values--about always being able to distinguish between that which is smart and that which is expedient. And that takes discipline. Can you distinguish between a genuine innovation and a mindless imitation? Are you prepared to walk away from ideas that promise to make money, even if they make no sense?

So if Buffet warns us of the path to economic destruction, but what do we need to do to keep on the right road? Scott Anthony provides another insightful post, again from Harvard Business Publishing in which he discuses the Three Steps to Innovating in Struggling Industries.

1. Lower the cost of testing.
2. Creatively tap into outside resources.
3. Ruthlessly prune the portfolio.

Against Intuition - Assumptions that block a path to a better way

Part of doing a blog based on looking for new paradigms is questioning assumptions of existing pathways as well as looking for new pathways. Chronicle Review recently looked at the assumption of intuition, in the formal, philosophical use of the word. My take on it was from the perspective of how it could relate to economics and creating a paradigm for a better world. This was bookmarked under the diigo group Psychology: the Science of Human Nature.

Quotes: Against Intuition - ChronicleReview.com

Experimental Philosophy seems to have the same acceptance of the main stream discipline as Experimental Economics. Though there is the argument that MRI studies, frequently cited in both, claim more than they can actually deliver. This is related in my mind to an argument of negative and positive rights and responsibilities. If we as a society are more interested in improving the environment than the CEO is in making money then we can't simply leave it to the market to make the choice and hope that they circumstances produce the best outcome case. This does not necessarily mean punitive regulations. There is also a chicken and egg dilemma regarding the philosophical basis of morality and the empirical methodology used by the experimentalist. I do not believe the one cannot fully separate oneself from the moral assumptions of one's culture to attain pure empirical objectivity. It does give a good helping of food for thought. Below are a few relevant quotes from the article.

• They think that by studying human minds, using empirical techniques, and drawing on the insights of modern psychological science, they can get a better sense of where intuitions come from, and whether or when they should be granted credence.
  
• Experimental philosophers also draw on work by contemporary psychologists demonstrating just how malleable human cognition is, how easily redirected and reshaped it is by external cues, even as the conscious mind remains blissfully unaware. Opinions on crime and punishment, for instance, can be altered by placing people in a dirty room designed to trigger feelings of disgust: Subjects in such experiments respond more punitively when asked what should be done to certain hypothetical criminals.
  
• Consider this scenario, used in numerous scholarly articles: A corporate chairman is presented by a vice president with a proposal for a new project. The VP explains that the project will increase profits but hurt the environment. The chairman replies, "I don't care at all about helping the environment. I just want to make as much profit as I can. Let's start the new program." They do, and predictably the environment is harmed.
• Did the CEO intentionally damage the environment? In one of Knobe's most cited studies, some 82 percent of students said yes.
• Then take this scenario: Same chairman, same VP, but this time the VP says the program will help the environment. The CEO, again, replies that he doesn't care; his only concern is money. He gives a thumbs-up and, again, as predicted, the environment is helped. This time only 23 percent of students say the CEO intentionally helped the earth, although the scenarios are logically identical. Continue the discussion on diigo »

Using Business Wisdom For Social Compassion

This weblog has written posts on change-agent organizations or non-profits using fundamental business practices to increase their economic viability. When it does, it very often gets its ideas from The Entrepreneurial Mind, which wrote another article in this vein on 6/4/08, Business Turns Profits into Charity.

MyBusiness magazine (from NFIB) has a feature written by Emily McMackin on a for profit social venture called Giving Tree ....

... which sells the GiveCard---a prepaid Visa or MasterCard that allows recipients to donate 10 percent of their gift to the charity of their choice---Nicholas and cofounder Jeff Jacobs discovered that consumers were eager to give back.

McMackin interview me (Jeff Cornwall) for the story and was curious about the growing trend of more for profit social ventures.

Young entrepreneurs today are taking this tradition a step further by forming businesses to tackle specific problems in society, says Jeff Cornwall, director of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship in Nashville, Tenn.

Without the IRS constraints that nonprofits have or the need to beg donors for money, these social entrepreneurs are finding more freedom to bring about change. Rather than trusting in these large institutions they don't think are effective, they're going out and solving problems at a grassroots level, Cornwall says. Given the interest we are seeing in students wanting to learn about social entrepreneurship, this is a trend that is likely to continue.

The New York Times ran a story on the same subject, social-entrepreneurship. This time though the focus was on Internet technology. When Tech Innovation Has a Social Mission - New York Times April 13, 2008.

diigo tags: innovation, web2.0, technology

Now a new style of “hybrid” technology organization is emerging that is trying to define a path between the nonprofit world and traditional for-profit ventures.They're often referred to as “social enterprises” because they pursue social missions instead of profits. But unlike most nonprofit groups, these organizations generate a sustainable source of revenue and do not rely on philanthropy.

Revenue is life blood for an economically viable entity, whether it is a corporate business, a entrepreneurial artisan or a social-entrepreneur. Revenue usually derives from some form of value added or productivity enhancement, though who provides the revenue and who benefits from the value-added may not always be the same.

Brewster Kahle, who has founded a number of successful Internet companies, as well as the nonprofit Internet Archive, said: “If we do this right, I think there is momentum here. The next major operating systems company might be a nonprofit.”

Mr. Kahle says he is developing a set of principles that he hopes will help formalize his idea that there is a middle ground between the technologists and the capitalists. He ticks off operating guidelines like transparency, staying out of debt, giving away information and refusing to hoard.

TechSoup distributes products from 32 commercial companies, including Cisco Systems, Microsoft and Symantec, to roughly 50,000 organizations annually, for a small administrative fee.

“We were just trying to meet the needs of nonprofits,” said Rebecca Masisak, co-chief executive of TechSoup.

“Computer technology and the Internet are lowering the cost of doing business,” said John Lilly, the chief executive of Mozilla, the Web browser developer that is being subsidized by advertising revenue from the search engine business.

Congress And Everybody Else Looking For A Culprit For Rising Prices

My web-trekking explorations are back on economics. The self-educational pursuit has to stop during my time in Nanjing, China because for various reasons I can't get to the Berkeley macro-economics videos that I had been following. There are though a number of posts from other sites that provide me food for thought.

It may seem obvious that there is a difference between economics and business, though coming up with a quick answer may not be that easy. Perhaps it's the difference between recession and depression, it depends on whether it's happening to you or other people.

Is it Inflation or a Bubble? is an economic question asked by the Small Business Trends expert Anita Campell.

Rising prices hurt us because we are people … consumers … above all else.

But as businesspeople, the situation can be even worse if you happen to be in one of those businesses that use the commodities and materials experiencing record-high prices right now.

This is a direct business concern, creating what could turn into a vicious cycle as those higher prices are passed on to the end-use consumers with little supposed benefit to the business producers.

Think of food (restaurants); gasoline (businesses with fleets and delivery vehicles); and high heating costs (landlords and real-estate related businesses).

She asks the larger economic question whether inflation was the real worry, rather than recession. But after digging into the question a little further, it appears that the question of high prices is more complex than simply inflation.

Charles Schwab Town Hall meeting, Chief Investment Strategist Liz Ann Sonders suggesting that there is a bubble taking place in commodities, spurred partly by speculators. That seems to be contributing to the rising prices of certain categories such as food and gasoline. (She mentions commodities speculation in this Wall Street Journal interview, too.)

Ms Campbell goes on to address another economic question. Consider this: while the prices of food and fuel have skyrocketed, the prices of some things keep coming down. It's not a question of inflation across the board. It's really a matter of some things being at record highs, and others being at record lows.

What do you think is happening? Weigh in with your opinion about: Technology Prices Defy Inflation (So Far)

The area she focuses on for this crowd-sourced analysis is technology. My hypothesis is that its the ability of technology to increase productivity following Moore and other so-called laws. As long as this happens there will be lower costs, though how long this will happen is another technical question. It is also how business people from entrepreneurs to secretaries in corporate offices use this technology. That according to the Berkeley macro-economic class is where the majority of the productivity boost comes from.

But what happens to tech productivity if you can't feed those enginners beer and pizza.

Back to the direct business concerns.

Consequently, some small businesses are being hurt more than others in the current environment. If your business happens to depend heavily on commodities — say you run a pizza shop and depend on flour and cheese — you are being hit hard. But if you are in a business that relies primarily on technology, then your costs of doing business may be low.

Ms. Campbell is not alone is looking for culprits for rising prices, according to this New York Times article BUSINESS June 25, 2008 By JAD MOUAWADs, Congress Looks for a Culprit for Rising Oil Prices. This expert doesn't follow the same line of thinking as Strategist Liz Ann Sonders when it comes to oil prices.

A pre-eminent energy expert is to testify on Wednesday before lawmakers that the suspicion that investors are a large cause for skyrocketing oil prices is misguided.

"Everyone would like to believe that there is a silver bullet — like a bubble or speculation — that can solve our oil problem," he said. Instead, he said, it would be better for the nation to focus on conserving energy and reducing its oil consumption.

My last post looked at the effect of the commodities upheaval on the poor. The Financial Times article Food crisis is a chance to reform global agriculture, cited in the post, provided additional insights from a number of economists including Paul Collier and Bart van Ark who wrote in response to the article.

We need to examine the two phenomena – increased shortages due to a decline in the growth of supply, and price increases related to speculation and securitization of several commodities – in conjunction to fully understand what has happened and what is likely to happen next. There is no question that the securitization of various food commodity markets in early 2007 has played an important role in this crisis, especially over recent months. The mean of the price increases of securitized agricultural commodities (including coffee, cotton, soybean oil, soybeans, sugar, wheat, and corn) was 49 percent in the 15 months from January 2007 to April 2008, compared to 20 percent in the preceding 12 months. In comparison, prices of non-securitized agricultural commodities (including, rice, tea, cocoa and rubber) increased by only 14 percent in the last 15 months, compared to 11 percent in the 12 months before.

Despite the slower average price increase, the effects of speculation do appear to have spilled over into some of these non-securitized commodities, for example, to rice (69 percent since January 2007) and palm oil (88%). One should also ask, as Martin Wolf does: If this is truly a speculative bubble, where are the stocks of these goods? The answer is in part: still out in the fields, as future contracts deal with future harvests. In all likelihood, some of the recent price jumps stems from the perception among hedgers and investors that the harvests will disappoint.

The author of the FT article Martin Wolf, FT associate editor and chief economics commentator, argues that while:

I am grateful to Bart for his comments on securitisation and prices. I should note, however, that if futures prices are jumping because of the perception that harvests will disappoint, this is stabilising speculation. It acts to lower consumption now, thus preserving stocks.

I am unclear on how this happens unless the end user has transparent information that this is going to happen. So far, I don't see that being the case. Another philosophical and ethical question it raises for me is if the so-called speculator realizes through more insightful analysis and precise information the actual market value of the product is he gambling? Yes, there is risk, but there is a difference between statistical knowledge to understand and using tea leaves to assess the unknown. No doubt though that once somebody does benefit from a deeper understanding of the market, they are followed by those who jump on the bandwagon long after the music has stopped playing.

To finish off, I am throwing in the comments from Paul Otellini from this interveiw in the New York Times TECHNOLOGY section on June 1, 2008. You have the business, the technology and the price of oil all combined together.

Bits: Intel's Chief on Strategy, Globalization and the Price of Oil Steve Lohr
In a wide-ranging interview, Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini talks about Intel's move into processors for smaller machines, the company's new chip plant in China, the challenges of programming many-core processors and the economic impact of the rising price of oil.

Ten Reasons John Mariotti Won't Use Social Media Sites

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends, who was featured in the last post, lead me to this article by John L. Mariotti.

John’s viewpoint represents the view of the vast majority of businesspeople today — they aren’t ready to drink the Kool-aid on social media sites just yet (maybe never). — Anita Campbell, Editor

I find it difficult to summarize Mr. Mariotti's ideas in any effective manner, so I am merely listing the categories. My personal perspective is that his points are either overblown or if valid there is no argument that traditional and web 2.0 marketing approaches are mutually exclusive. The chance that the majority of businesspeople may agree with him does not dissuade me.

10 Reasons I Won't Use Social Media Sites by John L. Mariotti

Plus, if you act now you will also get:

4 Better, Safer and More Personal Alternatives to Social Media

• Contacts made through professional societies and their meetings.
• Networking through current and former colleagues, friends and neighbors.
• Join and participate in clubs.
• Conferences and round-tables that deal directly and indirectly with related topics to your work.

And for a limited time with this special offer:

Other, More Profitable Mainstream Marketing Options

• Creative 3-dimensional direct mail.
• Create Selling Kits and tools that make it easier for sales people to communicate the benefits you offer.
• Pre-Trade Show Program.
• Re-evaluate and optimize your Web site.
• Include an appropriate blog that builds manageable relationships

As Mr. Mariotti tells us, I recognize that the marketing landscape is changing. I love and embrace new technology — but for the sake of profitable business and not because it's a shiny new toy. It's easy to get caught up in complexity and we know that complexity increases costs and cuts profits.

I also agree with him that, Nothing good comes easy. If this were all it took, everyone in the world would be connected to everyone else in the world and it would all be such a wonderful place. What I disagree with is that it is not worth making the effort.

Effective Pitches And Word-of-Mouth Core Promotional Values

This weblog often looks to Entrepreneurial Mind for basic insights on free enterprise. Not that I agree with everything written, but it is very good resource into the pragmatic philosophy of small business capitalism. It often provides insights into "why" you should do something and connects those whys to larger concerns in life. The fact that Professor Cornwall recognizes that there are larger concerns in life is to be respected.

Lately this weblog has been considering some of the ongoing musings regarding online social media including comparing its advantages and disadvantages to person-to-person communications. The Entrepreneurial Mind back in June wrote on how to Develop an Effective Pitch. This, the most basic component of business communication, minimal time, maximum information, optimal impact, has traditionally been face-to-face. The ability to deliver a good pitch is recognized as essential to being good at business, not any particular aspect of business, but leading the business. This apparently is still be true at Belmont University.

We teach our students about the art of the pitch. Most entrepreneurs will have only moments to grab the attention of an investor or a customer, so they need to learn how to explain what they do and how it creates value in a very short few moments.

However, as with so much in communication today, it is no longer only face-to-face or limited by geography as the Entrepreneurial Mind also informs us.

TechCrunch has an on-line site for elevator pitches. Visitors can vote "up" or "down" on the product ideas and offer their comments.

If a pitch is in your future go to this site and watch some of the pitches. It helps to see which pitches work and why. It really helps you to see what makes a pitch effective.

Even if you don't pitch for money, you will pitch to gain customers, attract employees, talk your spouse into your crazy idea, etc., etc. Learn how to pitch!

One of the goals of this weblog is to combine ideas together and one that seemed to be in the same vein comes from Zane Safrit writing for Small Business Trends Why's Word-of-Mouth So Important? back in May.

The pitch is recognized as a one chance at bat attempt. It seems that it would be rather beneficial if your pitch was good enough that others would be willing to continue to deliver it for you. As with the pitch, word-of-mouth no longer needs to have two mouths in the same room or area code. If the word-of-mouth community-created script is as tight as the sucessful pitch then branding should be all the more assured.

With effective, positive, powerful, self-sustaining, word-of-mouth you have the core mission statement, a fundamental mission statement that gets visceral, emotional, physiological, borderline irrational buy-in from your customers and your employees.

Zane Safrit argues that this directly helps the bottom line by improving CASH-FLOW.

The most important financial result for a small business is its cash-flow. Here's how cash-flows grow with a word-of-mouth marketing as core to your strategy:

1. Reduced advertising expense.
2. Shorter Sales Cycle.
3. Increase in Repeat Purchases.

Word-of-Mouth Arises from a Profound Connection. Word-of-mouth results from a profound connection and engagement both with and between your customers AND your employees. The experience they share, they create together, INSPIRES communication.

So who is most likely to take part in this effort? Those who are already friends, use the tools of web 2.0 and will find common ground in your product or service, in other words your customer base. Even when they don't use the same systems, they still find ways to communicate with each other as the following news article from the New York Times demonstrates.

TECHNOLOGY May 4, 2008 Essay: Friends May Be the Best Guide Through the Noise New companies are trying to solve a problem that the Internet itself created gathering the dense jungle of user-generated content across several platforms into one stream.

Still Here Subprime Fall Out And Credit Crunch

Recently, I went over some past Marginal Revolution posts that I had thought could advance my fletching understanding of economics. One of the clusters of issues of interest that was revisited was banks, subprime fallout and the credit crunch. This is an area that happens to cross over to my real life/day job persona.

I have though spoken with a commercial real estate appraiser who tells me that housing builder sentiment has bottomed out and is seeing an upturn. So even if banks are not lending as freely, there is the expectation that people (arguably people who can afford them) will be buying homes again in the not too distant future. If the negativity in the economy has been over-inflated and Tyler Cowen's point about the real impact of the subprime mortages compared to the overall economy was right, then we might see a turn around by the fall according to this view.

This isn't a prediction just passing along somebody else's perhaps optimistic take on the world.

However, for the most part the question as to whether or not the credit crunch is basically over or still here, the answer is:

Still here

The credit crunch isn't going anywhere

Feb 17th 2008
From Economist.com

THE credit crunch is simply not going away. Every week another arcane area of the bond market seems to be dragged into the crisis. Late last month, it was tender option bonds, short-term securities backed by municipal bond assets; this week, it was auction-rate notes. These are bits of short-term debt issued by municipalities; the problem is that no one wants to take part in the auctions, so the yields being paid are skyrocketing.

Finance & Economics Get article background Market.view


From a more on-the-streets view of getting commercial projects built and sold

Economic worries predate subprime mess Americans were expressing a declining confidence in the economy even before the subprime-mortgage mess exploded last summer. That lack of confidence could linger even if the economy improves. "I do think there is an increasing level of angst that is more fundamental and is not going to go away even when the economy improves," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of forecaster Moody's Economy.com. MSNBC/Associated Press (2/17)

And

Subprime crisis capsizes relationships

The subprime mortgage crisis has pressed banks to lay off employees in their commercial and residential mortgage divisions, and this is upending relationships that retail real estate developers, especially REITs, have cultivated with their underwriters, sources say. "Anecdotally, we've heard that many of the banks got rid of a lot of the people that were underwriting both residential and commercial real estate," said Phillip Martin, a REIT analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, on an earnings call. It was a cold January on Wall Street, with Morgan Stanley cutting 600 mortgage-related jobs and Lehman Bros. axing about 3,000 from its mortgage business. Private companies with more-personal connections to local and regional banks may have an advantage in this environment, observers say. Kite Realty is relying on a network of contacts formed during roughly 20 years as a private company before becoming a public REIT. "We have an advantage here in that we were a private company doing business for a long time, depending on commercial banking relationships," said CEO John Kite on a fourth-quarter earnings call. "Because of that, we didn't focus on one relationship manager, but we knew the president of the bank, the chief lending officer, the chief credit officer. One of our greatest strengths is having had to be a user of capital when we weren't a public company. Those are deep, long relationships." In fact, Kite Realty's list of potential lenders has expanded since the mortgage crisis set in. "We've actually had some growth in relationships," CFO Daniel Sink said on the call, "because there has been some turnover in some of the larger banks, and some of the people that we have had strong relationships with have branched off into new ventures with new banks."

Finally this from the CoStar Group: The Waiting Game: Lenders, Borrowers Grapple With Uncertainty Over Property Values, Cap Rates

Lenders Opt To Be Tightfisted as Markets Reprice Risks, Assets

While the credit crunch is bona fide and has helped topple through-the-roof commercial real estate prices in the last six months, the unexplored reality is that there is still abundant money out there. It's just that lenders are reluctant to give it out as freely as they did this time last year.

The distinction is more than semantics because it suggests that lenders are willfully holding back until such time as …

And that's where it stops, because no one seems to know when that time is. The uncertainty about where property prices and cap rates are is "the elephant in the room, sometimes discussed, sometimes not, but impossible to ignore," as one banker put it.

Guy Kawasaki 's The Art Of The Start Can Apply To Paradigm Pathways As Well

Although Guy Kawasaki is well-known in the web 2.0 world, my introduction to him has been more gradual. The first introduction to him and his work being through blog.guykawasaki.com in the So Money (of any currency) Can Buy Happiness post. Then through the ChangeThis site in the Optimism Is Not For Wimps post.

Guy Kawasaki's contribution is ChangeThis :: The Art of the Start

A former Apple Fellow and entrepreneur extraordinaire, Guy talks about up-starting a start-up. A sneak preview from his upcoming book, "The Art of the Start." Guy encourages entrepreneurs to make meaning, make mantra, and get going. According to Kawasaki, some examples of making 'meaning' are: make the world a better place, increase the quality of life, right a terrible wrong, and prevent the end of something good. Plus, his brilliant FAQ's (frequently avoided questions) will answer almost all your fears about starting a new business.

All of which are goals that this weblog can support. More recently, the topic of discussion in an The Entrepreneurial Mind post was again Guy Kawasaki

Guy offered many pearls of wisdom, but one of the best that I had not heard from him before was this:

"An old Chinese proverb says this: 'If you wait by the river eventually the body of your enemy will float by.'"

Dr. Cornwall sees this as advising us that,

Too many entrepreneurs are impatient and impulsive. They lock themselves into a cat and mouse game with competitors. In doing so, they become too clever by half. Put your energy into your employees and your customers.

Good things take time. It takes time to build a successful business and it takes time to build wealth. Take the high road, work hard, stick to your vision, make your customers your evangelists, and all those competitors you are obsessing about will take care of themselves.

It probably best though to let Guy Kawasaki do the talking himself which he does in this Art of the Start video.

diigo tags: advice, business, entrepreneurship, learning, management

The Power of Many! Music For All?

Small Business Trend's small business expert Steven Teo writes about New Business Ideas: The Power of Many

Termed "crowdsourcing" by Wired Magazine, this trend looks set to be exploited by businesses and entrepreneurs who appreciate the power of crowds and communities:

One site Steven provided was of particular interest because it could potentially serve as a very viable solution for musicians looking for a new path

• Independent music site Amie Street knows economics inside out. It uses demand-driven pricing to let the community dictate the pricing of the tracks it sells on the website. Prices begin at zero and rise up depending on demand and supply factors. Community members recommend their favorite music and give back 70% of proceeds to artists after the first $5 in sales. We like it because it encourage musicians to mobilize their fan bases to support their music.
  

Belmont's Andy Tabar is Finalist in B-Plan Competition and IdeaBlob

For anybody who has been following Belmont's Andy Tabar entrepreneurial endeavors, he is Finalist in B-Plan Competition according to The Entrepreneurial Mind.

TechKnowledge Point announced the ten national semifinal ventures coming to the 5th Annual Spirit of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (S.E.E.D.) National Collegiate Venture Forum on March 14th and 15th at the Reagan Ranch Center in downtown Santa Barbara. Congratulations to Belmont University junior Andy Tabar for making the semifinals of this year's competition. Andy is an entrepreneurship major here at Belmont.

The vision of SEED is to help top collegiate ventures secure capital funding. SEED completes preliminary due diligence on dozens of business plans submitted by the December deadline, then invites the most promising ventures to present their business plans to a world-class panel of evaluators, early-stage investors, and product development and market-industry specialists. SEED attracts dozens of qualified investors to see the presentations (angel investors, hedge fund managers, private equity managers, venture capital fund managers, and investment bankers).

Andy has been featured before in this weblog as an entrant for the IdeaBlob competition. The voting for the finals round Andy is in ends on January 31st.

From Ideablob's Debut Newsletter: November's Winners Share Secrets to $10,000

As this weblog has blogged about Ideablob in the past and a number of visitors have shown interest it seems to be of benefit to provide the information that was received by e-mail this morning. Of course, if one signs up with Ideablob, the e-mails and other resources will go straight to the interested party.

That is probably a good idea since my personal interest is more on how this works as a web 2.0 enterprise and entrepreneurship tool rather than any interest in actually starting a business at this point in my life.

Ideablob's Debut Newsletter: November's Winner Shares Secrets to $10,000 Greetings Blobbers! Thank you for participating in the ideablob.comSM community, the place where small business owners and entrepreneurs are sharing, growing and voting on business ideas. Whether you submitted an idea, voted, gave advice or just browsed, we're glad you blobbed! So many talented entrepreneurs and business people are sharing ideas in an open forum, and just as we hoped, blobbers are freely providing valuable advice and support. Ideablob is an idea, too, and thanks to your participation, we're learning and growing. Recently we announced another $10,000 prizewinner. We just launched ideablob University (ideablob.com/university ), a collaborative project with academic entrepreneurial programs across the country. And we added new features to make the site better and easier to use. December's winner dances with ideablob.com This week, ideablob spent some time in New York and watched a great performance of the Misnomer Dance Theater. Then again, the organization's artistic director and choreographer, Chris Elam, is the winner of ideablob.com's prize for December. With the $10,000, he wants to build an online platform for performing artists. Some of the features will include real-time video streaming of rehearsals, instant messaging with performers, and tools to help raise money (such as through online advertising). "One of my dancers found out about ideablob and forwarded it to me," said Elam. "She thought it would be a great way to build awareness about our efforts within the dance company while gaining financial support." Elam was also quite effective in promoting his idea on his own blog, with creative uses of YouTube videos. Check it out at http://www.misnomer.org/blog/. November's Winner In early December, Marci Bossow Schankweiler of North Wales, PA was named November's ideablob.com monthly contest winner for the best business idea, as voted on by you, the ideablob community. Marci is the first Advanta BusinessCard customer to win the monthly contest, and as a result, she is eligible to receive 1,000,000 rewards points on her Advanta BusinessCard (or the cash equivalent) in addition to the $10,000 monthly contest prize. Marci is President and founder of Crossing the Finish Line, a Blue Bell, PA-based non-profit organization that provides excursions for young adult cancer patients and their families. She founded CFL after her first husband passed away from cancer at the age of 30, and plans to use the prize money to help fund a home for cancer patients near Orlando, FL. Marci's secrets for getting $10k How did Marci Schankweiler snag November's grand prize? True, she had a great idea. But she also had a strong marketing plan, backed with some teamwork. Here's how she pulled it off: - She encouraged some of her tech savvy friends to create groups on Facebook. There were also personal email campaigns on MySpace.com®. - Marci's organization, Crossing the Finish Line, has its own e-mail newsletter. So yes, she had a get-out-the-vote email blast. - On the final day of the contest, Marci rallied her organization's staff, volunteers and board members to send out emails as well as make phone calls. As Marci stated, "E-mail is great but I believe in the need to connect with people on a more personal and direct level. A phone call is more likely to rally a person than a mass e-mail is. There's nothing like a good conversation to get people engaged!" ideablob UniversitySM: On January 9th, at the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference, we launched ideablob University, a collaborative effort between ideablob.com and several university entrepreneurial programs across the country. Ideablob University serves as an experiential learning tool that will allow professors and students to view the ideablob.com activity of their classmates via a private classroom. Ideas, comments and feedback will live in the ideablob.com universe and eligible students may compete for the $10,000 prize. Site Enhancements: Ideablob.com is a work in progress. Here are some of the enhancements we've made or are planning to make very soon. Advice We think making it easier to give and receive advice is crucial for the success of the community. So, our plans to improve the Advice section include the following: - Make a better, more clear distinction between advice and comments. - Identify and recognize those community members who stand out as top advisors. Submitting ideas When submitting ideas on the home page, you can now categorize them as being for an existing business, a startup, a nonprofit organization or an invention. Feedback We've added a more prominent feedback button on the homepage to gather user feedback and recommendations. We're constantly fixing bugs and always invite you to let us know if you find problems. We're also making the site more secure to better protect the fairness of the contest. Timer We added a timer that counts down to the end of the contest to help build a little excitement and a greater sense of urgency. Many thanks for your continued interest and support. Happy blobbing! Sincerely, The ideablob team NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Contest began on 9/24/07 at 12:00:00 am CT and ends on 3/31/08 at 11:59:59 pm CT. Open to legal residents of the 50 U.S. states and D.C. who are of the legal age of majority in their state of residence at the time of entry. Void where prohibited. To be eligible for the rewards points portion of the prize, you must have an Advanta BusinessCard Account in good standing. All awarded points are subject to the Advanta Business Rewards Program Rules. Residents of AZ, MD, NJ, ND, TN and VT are not eligible for rewards points portion of the prize. Click here for complete Official Rules. Sponsor: Advanta Bank Corp, PO Box 30715, Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0715. EMAIL INFORMATION This email was sent to briandrpm@gmail.com. If you would like to make changes to your ideablob e-mail settings please click here. Please add ideablob@email.ideablob.com to your address book to ensure delivery of future communications and newsletters NOTICE ABOUT SERVICING E-MAIL This e-mail was sent to you by Advanta Bank Corp. to provide information about your ideablob.com account and/or services for which you are registered. You may receive service e-mails even if you have requested not to receive e-mail marketing offers from Advanta Bank Corp. SECURITY/PRIVACY CONCERNS Please see ideablob.com for Ideablob Privacy and Security Statement. ©2008 Advanta Bank Corp. All rights reserved. Advanta and the Advanta logo are registered service marks owned by Advanta Corp. Ideablob, ideablob.com and ideablob University are service marks owned by Advanta Bank Corp.

Finding The Style For A Sucessful Career (Or Two)

Successful Career Entrepreneur Style via The Entrepreneurial Mind on 11/30/07, again stresses, as from from a previous post, what Professor Cornwall calls, "the importance of engineering personal goals and aspirations into entrepreneurs' business models. This includes both financial goals (income and wealth) and personal non-financial goals."

He provides an example of an entrepreneur featured in at Career Journal who found the balance she was seeking between work and family, be it either just starting or empty-nest.

"In a culture obsessed with profit and growth, how do you curb the growth of a successful start-up to preserve time with your spouse and new baby?"

"For Brenda Thompson, who started the business of her dreams only months before having her first baby, the answer is to ignore the siren song of expansion and keep the business small. Her story shows how taking the long view can pay off."

First the Wind-Up Then The Pitch

Making the Pitch advices The Entrepreneurial Mind on 12/3/07 is one of the most daunting challenges for entrepreneurs. To help, he provides a link to Suite101.com , which he calls,

"a nice summary of what it takes to make an effective pitch under pressure."

"When they have to make a pitch for their business. It might directed to a potential investor, a banker, that first customer -- or in some cases to their spouse! This pitch has taken on the nickname of the elevator pitch, as you often have only a very short time to get your message across (imagine a short ride in an elevator with the investor before he or she has to get off on their floor)."

I would call it practicing on-the-spot concise thinking.

Passion Is For Life All Of It

Is Passion for Your Business Enough?, asks The Entrepreneurial Mind on 12/4/07

Professor Jeff Cornwall of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship advises that,

"Indeed, a good business model is never enough to carry you through the adversity and tough times that entrepreneurs almost always will face in their new ventures."

He also points out that passion is a popular topic in the business literature these days. Introducing us to the About.com article, The Mid-Life Challenge: Make a Plan to Re-ignite Career Passion. Experts encourage us to to seek a career path that "ignites our passion" and gives our life meaning. Now this has been one of the main topics of interest for this weblog. Similar to my readings of Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends even though I am not an entrepreneur I still find a good deal of value in what Entrepreneurial Mind has to offer.

Professor Cornwall doesn't however just leave it there, providing some very good advice through what he calls, this part of the "me" part of assessing opportunities. often write about. This process of assessment brings him to the following insightful conclusion.

"But I have some concern that many are taking the importance of passion and meaning too far -- to an almost unhealthy extreme. If unchecked, seeking meaning for your life from your business can lead to the kind of workaholism that many had hoped to avoid with an entrepreneurial career."

He then asks a question that focuses on self-definition.

"What do farmers do? They farm. What do designers do? They design. What do managers do? They manage. What do entrepreneurs do? Well, they.....

His point is being an entrepreneur or for me change agent has no simple verb to describe it. It becomes a matter of who one is not what one does, but it can become a limiting definition.

"Careers can do this to us. If we are not careful, they can consume all that we are. And what gets lost? Our families, our friendships, and even our souls."

"If we are to become all that we were put on this Earth to do, we have to temper the temptation to become consumed by our work. We need to resist becoming the noun of what we do for a living."

• Work hard at being a spouse.
• Work hard at being a parent.
• Work hard at worshiping God (Buddha, Allah or your choice of spiritual truth- mine).
• Work hard at being a friend.
• Work hard at being a good citizen in your community.
• And yes, work hard at your vocation.

None of these alone can fulfill our humanness.

This is just a summary from my perspective. The original post is well worth reading.

Making It Up As You Go Along

NPR : Making It Up as I Go Along From NPR This I Believe

This comes from my youth and finds new meaning in my life now. Admittedly, I am not as ready as Alice is to make transitions, but I do recognize that the ability to do so is an important factor in making a paradigm shift. I do see some similarities with what I wrote about at Changing Plans Changing Life.

Alice Brock, owner of Alice's Restaurant — made famous in Arlo Guthrie's 1967 song and 1969 movie — stands outside of her restaurant in 1974. Courtesy of Alice Brock



I just barreled ahead, discovering all kinds of possibilities and making plenty of mistakes. And those are really great opportunities to learn. When something works, well, that's that. But when it doesn't, I have to think about why, and I have to come up with some other way that will make it work. Mistakes lead to discovery and that can produce delight, like cream of salt and pepper soup. I made it in a pinch once and believe me it's good. You should try it!

Recipe for Cream of Salt and Pepper Soup

One day, Alice Brock saw a tour bus coming up the drive to her restaurant and she suddenly remembered she was supposed to feed 40 people a full lunch. She didn't have any soup made, so she improvised this Cream of Salt and Pepper Soup on the spot. Brock says, "Soup is any kind of food cooked in enough liquid to make eating it impossible with a fork."

1. Sautee some onions in butter
2. Add chicken stock and heat
3. Just before serving, add fresh heavy cream
4. Add salt and pepper to taste

Dawn by Anita Campbell

An Inspirational Small Business Trends Movie

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends wrote me some while ago that she " wrote for small business owners, not for individuals." However, it seems to me that she quite often provides her readers with resources that are valuable not only to the business entity but the individual as well. All individuals, not only those in business but employees, students, anybody participating in our society would gain benefits from seeing this movie. Now I am being unfair again because I can safely presume that Anita actually does not make a strict distinction between the small business and the individual that created it. However, do we apply that distinction between ourselves as an employee and individual or as a consumer and individual? I find this type of wisdom that people can use in their daily lives of running a means of bringing products or services of use to others of a far greater benefit than many of the touchy-feely affirmations prevalent on the Internet. It puts a lot of what I have been writing about for the last few months in a succinct, inspirational and accessible format.

Other short videos of an equally informative, interesting though perhaps not as inspirational level from past posts have been How to Be Creative and The Machine is Us/ing Us.

Can't Talk Your Way Through A Paradigm Shift., Especially With Your Foot In Your Mouth

Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends left a kindly worded comment to my post "You Can't Talk Your Way Through A Paradigm Shift". The full comment is at the original post.

First, I want to thank Anita for taking the trouble to respond to my post. She wasn't responding to a comment that I had made on her blog but still went to the trouble to write me. She does take me to task for a few things but does it in a very cordial manner, making a number of valid points and perhaps giving me more credit than is warranted.

One issue she has is with my lack of perspective in my writing. She wrote, "I'm wondering who is this person, an activist? A student? A corporate employee? A PR flak?" I can understand her confusion because I can't claim to have a perspective that I am trying to communicate to the world. I am a bit of all of the above, now going through my own mid-century paradigm shift trying to come up with new perspectives to face the future. She does try to understand my lack of perspective, “Probably because you just naturally assumed that anyone reading was coming at it from your perspective." In truth, its more like I just naturally assumed that nobody was going to be reading it.

Now I may have disagreed in my post with what Anita wrote in her article, but I should be clear that her articles have been a very important resource for me in creating my own new paradigms. I am not a small business person (actually small government), but I can take insights from her writings that can be applied to a positive means of creating beneficial change in the world. As I have said before, the social change activists need to start doing this more.

I may not even be in full accordance with her in general, but then I'm not really in full accordance or agreement with any of the blogs I connect with, Seth Godin, Tyler Cowen, Entrepreneurial Mind, or even TED. I do, however, find them all far more useful, because they challenge my thinking more than reading blogs that I might agree with more.

She then explains that "from the perspective of a business owner, I wanted to point out that business owners may be trying to do good. But they need to make sure their own house is in order. You can't be hypocritical as a business owner. You can't for PR purposes take on some cause if in reality you are doing something adverse to the cause. And not only can't you whitewash, but by taking on some cause you make your business a bigger target because there are groups out there that won't let you get away with it." I have to confess that I did always suspect that this was true from my other readings of her writing. I took unfair advantage because it made a good contrast with the BusinessPundit article. Actually it was only the term “anti-social responsibility” activists”, that I had any real issue with.

As to the question. "Are they for or against social responsibility causes? I honestly can't tell what your position is from your article." I am for it. My criticism, in truth, was not directed at business owners. I have seen some rather superficial attempts at social responsibility from government and from activists and was really going after all of them. I was also going after myself, continuing to vet what my position is. Anita however makes it clear, " I write for small business owners, not for individuals." and is obviously successful at it. It is I, who should have been clearer. I probably did sound too judgmental and preachy.

I do find Anita's discussion of trends informative. This one in particular about activists who call out companies for hypocritical cause-based practices was of interest because I could put myself on both sides of the fence. Anita says, “Some blog posts are mere observations and don't necessarily argue a position. My purpose often is simply to observe and by observing, it gives people a nugget of information.”. Though I am trying to take a position, it is often more times than not formulating a position and her blog whether I agree or not as been an important resource, and again I thank her. This is actually one of the highlights of this endeavor.

You Can't Talk Your Way Through A Paradigm Shift

Businesspundit: YUM Brands and The World's Largest CSR Project

This caught my eye because it is in direct opposition to another article that I decided to bypass because it wasn't clear to me what was the intention of the article and my general sense was negative. Watch Out for Anti-Social Responsibility Campaigns

Rob, the author of the first blog admits to being, "skeptical of these types of corporate projects, but Yum employees have really supported this effort, donating money and time to help make a difference. Regardless of your philosophical views on CSR, this project is interesting because Yum seems to be walking the walk, not just talking the talk."

The title of the second blog post is confusing. "Social responsibility is being embraced by businesses. But as more companies participate in causes, watch out for “anti-social responsibility” activists. If your business has any vulnerabilities to a negative public relations campaign by a passionate activist, participating in a highly-publicized cause may be just the thing that puts your vulnerabilities under a spotlight." So are we being warned about spoilsports who ruin the party or are we being warned that if we we need to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. This weblog has raised concerns before with superficial efforts to address problems that focus more on style than substance and not just with businesses.