Entrepreneurship Opportunities through Science

I have been digging through my older and almost forgotten pending draft posts and found some that I still think worthwhile posting. Sometime ago, November 2, 2008, JANET RAE-DUPREE wrote in the Unboxed feature of the New York BUSINESS section Times warning us that It's No Time to Forget About Innovation. The main point of the article and the book is that we need to do some long term thinking. This blog allows me to do some meta-thinking about many of the issues discussed in my Milestones for a New Millennium, as well as those being dealt with in my real life/day job such as economic, entrepreneurship, social-entrepreneurship and innovation.

The sour economy is bad news for corporate innovation and technology, and it could spell trouble for years to come.

“We’re focusing on the short term and we’re not planting the seeds for the future,” says Judy Estrin, former chief technology officer at Cisco Systems and author of “Closing the Innovation Gap.” She suggests instilling five core values to entrench innovation in the corporate mind-set:

1. questioning,
2. risk-taking,
3. openness,
4. patience and
5. trust.

All five must be used together — risk-taking without questioning leads to recklessness, she says, while patience without trust sets up an every-man-for-himself mentality.

That still leaves open the question of how do we take the innovative idea on the napkin to commercialization in the market place? These video from MIT World » : Innovation to Commercialization: Using Government Funding to Kick Start Your Start-Up provide some possible pathways.

ABOUT THE PANEL DISCUSSION: Hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum, moderator Bruce Gellerman elicits some key dos and don’ts from a National Science Foundation small business program officer, and from tech CEOs who have benefited from the government’s programs.

The MIT Enterprise Forum, Inc. builds connections to technology entrepreneurs and to the communities in which they reside. The Enterprise Forum produces a series of educational programs about entrepreneurship through a network of 24 worldwide chapters. Anyone interested in or involved with technology entrepreneurship is welcome to participate and join together to form the Enterprise Forum community.

The primary objective of the NSF SBIR/STTR Program is to increase the incentive and opportunity for small firms to undertake cutting-edge, high risk, high quality scientific, engineering, or science/engineering education research that would have a high potential economic payoff if the research is successful.

• diigo tags MIT, entrepreneurship, National Science Foundation, technology, global, science, SBIR

Activist Bringing About Change Through Disruption (Social and Economic)

I am posting on this subject here before dealing with it over at my other blog Milestones for a New Millennium. This blog allows me far more philosophical latitude, making it more of a learning tool for me, and I am still exploring these concepts.

The question is whether it is possible to create economically sustainable enterprises that help the billion at the bottom of the economic ladder in a uber-consumer world? It seems obvious that efforts to break into a market will require innovation, but are the cards so stacked that such efforts are hopeless, especially in fields such as Healthcare? After watching this talk by Clayton Christensen, I am going to say no, that a sustainable social-entrepreneurial model is very viable.

• MIT World » : The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution to the Healthcare Crisis

  diigo tags: MIT, engineering, systems design, healthcare, management

  • Christensen distinguishes between the kind of sustained and incremental technological improvements that help a market leader retain its edge, and “disruptive technology,” where a simple and affordable idea takes root in “an undemanding application at the bottom of the market, then improves from that foothold.” Christensen, looking at lots of industries “found almost invariably that an entrant company came in and killed the leaders” by way of a simplifying technology.
    

To my mind, this is closely tied with the the concept of creative-destruction. I don't, taking counsel from Robert Solow, see its founding proponent, Joseph Schumpeter as the savior of 21st century economics as some do, and especially not of activists seeking change through social enterprise,.

Which brings us to the "democracy" in Schumpeter's title. He was not a democrat by instinct or by reflection. He had little confidence in the ability of the average citizen to vote intelligently...

At the same time Solow saw that Schumpeter realized that:

Anyone can invent a new product or a new technique of production. The entrepreneur is the one who first sees its economic viability, bucks the odds, fights or worms his way into the market, and eventually wins or loses. Each win means profit for the entrepreneur and his backers, and it also means a jog upward for the whole economy. In the course of this process, which cannot possibly run smoothly, many businesses, individuals, and institutions, themselves founded on earlier successful innovations, will be undermined and swept away. Schumpeter called this birth-and-death process "creative destruction," and realized before anyone else that it was the main source of economic growth.

Creative-destruction is still a useful means, more descriptive than prescriptive, of looking at the world. The disagreement is with what actions we take with that knowledge. What disruptive innovations allow social-entrepreneurs is a means of striving in the world without having to beat the leading-edge of established corporations.

Other posts on creative-destruction
Creative-Destruction, Entrepreneurship And Innovation
The Awards And Risks of Innovation: Embracing Destruction And Creation
Consumerville USA Versus Creatorville USA

Overcoming Copyright Concerns aka Making Sure You Get A Paycheck

David Pogue of the New York Times has been mentioned in this weblog before under a similar subject, the The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality. Here Mr. Pogue asks Can e-Publishing Overcome Copyright Concerns? - New York Times on May 22, 2008. This time he seems to have been attempting to offer some business advice to artistic entrepreneurs. The question of copyrights has been linked with the question of fair use in a number of posts. It is a double-edged question. One wants to protect the concept of fair use, but the individual artist finds himself at risk. Mr. Pogue asks the unresolved question.

"What is the writer or musician to do, though, if she can't earn money from her art? Simple, says the Slashdotter: earn your money playing live (if you're one of those musicians who plays live), or selling T-shirts or merchandise, or providing some other kind of 'value-added' service. Many such arguments seem to me to be simple greed disguised in high-falutin' idealism about how 'information wants to be free.'

This weblog has passed on advice from both the artistic perspective and the business perspective. A week after his article (May 29, 2008) Mr. Pogue received advice from his readers, though he was reluctant to take it. From the Desk of David Pogue - Readers Have Their Say in the E-Publishing Debate - NYTimes.com

Last week in this space, I agonized over the issue of releasing the books in my Missing Manual series in electronic form.

A number of passionate writers were confident that releasing free copies of my books would lead to more sales of the printed ones, not less. These people could not understand why I don't see that:

Mr. Pogue has every right to provide his product or services to the public as he sees fit and if he doesn't want to make them available free online, so be it. Not everybody is comfortable with all aspects of e-commerce. How useful his advice is though to struggling artists in another question. I am not certain that he even addresses the question. I am summarizing the question here, partially because of copyright concerns. The questioner is not asking Mr. Pogue to provide the materials for free. He is asking him to consider alternative avenues of sales/revenue and challenges him to do a test.

"All you have proven is that there is pent-up demand for an electronic version of your book. Your conclusion is only valid IF you had a legitimate electronic version to sell, and people chose to get the free one instead of the paid one.

Even if your book was on a pirated site, people (like me) would buy a legitimate non-DRM'd electronic version if you sold it. Until you do, you cannot make any claims about digital piracy from personal experience, because you haven't done a valid test."

Mr. Pogue's response: This is the crux of the matter, really: *nobody* can do a valid test. Some authors (like Cory Doctorow) point to anecdotal evidence that free e-versions boost the sales of printed books; other authors (like Stephen King and Steven Poole, whose blog I quoted last week) declared their e-book experiments failures. But a truly valid test will never be conducted because it would require parallel universes:

Mr. Pogue's response would be valid entrepreneurial advice if the questioner was applying for a job at CERN, but artisans in a new economy won't be able to wait for such a perfect universe(s?). I suspect that Mr. Pogue's position is based more on his view of the "morality" of the issue. Morality is in quotes not to question Mr. Pogue's ethics, but in recognition that it is not as straight forward an issue as some may claim. Does the artist need to give away his creativity because Slashdot thinks 'information wants to be free'? - No, but if the artist finds that selling t-shirts and using the music for marketing is a better business model than selling music and using the t-shirts for marketing, they better give it some thought. The old paradigms are gone.

diigo tags: web2.0, entrepreneurship copyright epublishing, pogue,

The Musician As Businessperson The Entrepreneur as Artisan

The New York Times brought up an ongoing debate with its Free Music? Only With a Fight article back on March 15, 2008 under its BUSINESS| What's Online section. The fight is over the economics.

Hugh MacLeod asked the same basic question, in his case regarding software, how does a software company make money, if all software is free? via gapingvoid: "cartoons drawn on the back of business cards" by hugh macleod back on 4/8/08.

On Page 122 of this month's Wired Magazine, I'm given a brief mention in the first paragraph of an article, "Open Source Software Made Developers Cool; Now It Can Make Them Rich", all to do with monetization of Open Source software. Here's the online version.

Last spring, marketer and blogger Hugh MacLeod posted a question on his site: If open source is such a phenomenon, where are all the open source billionaires? His audience wasn't amused. Open source software relies on a community of volunteer developers who tinker on, write for, or amend a program, then give it away free. MacLeod's site filled up with complaints that even to look for billionaires violated the spirit of the open source movement. "There have to be rewards," one commenter wrote, "but they don't have to be financial."

What gets me working for Microsoft is that I've always been very interested in something else, namely, how people make a living. This is true for large companies, small companies, billionaires and "humble tradesmen" alike. This is why I can work with a large software company like Microsoft, or a small tailoring firm like English Cut, and find them both utterly fascinating. Everybody needs to get paid; that is the great constant in business.

Much of today's economy seems to be based on the intangibles of creativity rather than the production of product. This weblog initially looked at fair use and copyright issues and its impact on the economic viability at the individual level. Special interest has also been paid to the economics of this new paradigm at a more broad based level. Hugh MacLeod provides some insight from the world of Web 2.0.

Last summer, at a dinner party in London, I had the great pleasure of meeting Simon Phipps, the Head of Open Source at Sun Microsystems. .. A lot of the conversation was off the record, but one of my main take-outs was that Simon passionately believes that "The Future Is Open Source".

A few weeks ago, I met a young developer who worked in an IT department of a large insurance company. I asked him what kind of software did he use. Answer: About 75% Microsoft, 25% Open Source. I asked him why did he not use more Open Source? I thought IT people loved Open Source?

"If something goes wrong with Microsoft, I can phone Microsoft up and have it fixed. With Open Source, I have to rely on the community."

And the community, as much as we may love it, is unpredictable. It might care about your problem and want to fix it, then again, it may not. Anyone who has ever witnessed something online go "viral", good or bad, will know what I'm talking about.

When you buy a Microsoft product, you're not just getting ones and zeros. There's also a form of "social contract" implicit in the commercial transaction. You gave them money, this entitles you to certain expectations.

The last time this was considered, under Troubadour Troubles - Economic, Legal, Moral? You Pick, links were provided to David Byrne and his advice on Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars. This time the advice comes from Entrepreneurial Mind, who provided back on March 28, 2008 a perspective on the Musician as Artisan.

The music industry is facing an interesting puzzle these days How do you run a business where customers do not want to pay and they do not want advertising?

Efforts to sell music by subscription have mainly failed...traditional radio's offer of free music surrounded by audio advertising also is being rejected by a generation that resents undesirable interruptions.

"They want to be the program director, and they insist that the program be free," says Jerry Del Colliano.

The big boys in the industry do what big boys do in any industry undergoing fundamental change -- they try to get the government to protect their interests.

The predictions from the Institutue for the Future about the future of small business might offer a glimpse into the future of music:

Artisans, historically defined as skilled craftsmen who fashioned goods by hand, will re-emerge as an influential force in the coming decade. These next-gen artisans will craft their goods and shape the economy -- through upswings and downturns -- with an effect reaching far beyond their neighborhoods, or even their nations. They'll work differently than their medieval counterparts, combining brain with brawn as advances in technology and the reaches of globalization give them greater opportunities to succeed.

Summing it all up from Hugh MacLeod:

The reason Microsoft is able to charge the money it does IS NOT JUST BECAUSE OF THE SOFTWARE. Like Open Source, the social contract can often matter far more than the ones and zeros.

Summing it all up from Professor Cornwall:

...I hope that it is an industry sustained by talented artists -- and successful artisans -- who help us understand love, heart ache, happiness, sadness, joy, despair.

I have to admit being pleased with the idea that the rock star provided the more business oriented advice and the business professor talked about issues closer to the artistic soul. Both Hugh MacLeod and Professor Cornwall, I suspect, are approaching the same place from different directions. Whether they or we all will arrive at the same place is another question. The challenge is to actively instill the humanity that Professor Cornwall evokes into the so far unwritten and to a large extent unrealized social contract that Hugh MacLeod suggests.

Surviving Ideaicide And Other Perils Of The New Economy

Some of the recent posts for this weblog have been dealing with the creative-destructive aspects on the Web 2.0 business environment, Kevin Kelly's insights for the creative side and commodification for the destructive. Another post dealt with the new Artisan Economy.

What this post is taking a look at are some of the aspects of the social/business environment in which all of this is suppose to be happening. This is to serve as a reminder that having a laptop does not instill instant creativity or guarantee a smooth road to success.

As this New York Times BUSINESS article on February 3, 2008 By JANET RAE-DUPREE tells us in Unboxed: Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work

As humans, we want to believe that creativity and innovation come in flashes of pure brilliance, with great thunderclaps and echoing ahas. Balderdash.

Not only do we have to work hard on our own ideas, we have to maintain an openness to conflicting ideas, going back to what F. Scott Fitzgerald advised. This Los Angeles Times article provides a more indepth perspective.

The modern world is an ever-changing mass of contradictions. Reconciling them is fundamental to success, whether in business or in life.

The need to keeping conflicting ideas in balance is hard enough, but one also has to do so in an environment of increasing complexity. As small business expert by Ivana Taylor review of The Complexity Crisis — Why Keeping it Simple is Not Stupid at Small Business Trends' tells us.

Looking at the current business obsession regarding product proliferation, the long tail, and flat worlds complexity the argument goes has run amok among businesses, both big and small. John Mariotti, former president of Rubbermaid Office Products and Huffy Bicycles, lends perspective and clarity to complexity in his new book The Complexity Crisis. Why too many products, markets and customers are crippling your company and what to do about it.

"Businesses must compete in more complex global markets than ever before. Most companies are seeking double-digit growth in markets growing in single digit rates — or not at all. This quest for growth has led to runaway complexity caused by the proliferation of products, customers, markets, suppliers, services, locations, and more. All of these add costs, which go untracked by even the best accounting systems. Complexity also fragments management focus, wastes time and money, and ultimately reduces shareholder value. The problems grow, but they remain under the radar of management attention. Complexity is arguable, the most insidious, hidden profit drain in today's business world."

What is of greatest interest is how, even succeeding in meeting the above challenges, you keep your ideas alive. One source of inspiration has been referenced before, the Change This Manifesto. This time the pointer comes from Brand Autopsy's johnmoore on 2/1/08 Ideaicide Prevention is Everybody's Business.

"Ideas are usually rejected out of turn for being too 'something' — too fast, too unproven, too far beyond the corporate image. 'Too something' is a reactionary description used to take the edge off ideas that are strong, bold, and a little scary at first sight. Your challenge is to help people discover a means, harmonious with the culture, to accept your concept."

Alan Parr & Karen Ansbaugh Ideaicide: How To Avoid It And Get What You Want * ChangeThis Manifesto *

I am not sure that this has to happen necessarily in a corporate setting. GroupThink, which I suspect is a primary cause only needs two to be contagious. Government is also particularly susceptible to this aliment.

Finally, in this type of environment the chances of unhampered non-stop success are slim and none. As the The Entrepreneurial Mind told us back on 1/30/08 Failure Stinks!. Fortunately, Dr. Cornwall provides a pointer to Bounce.

Barry Moltz's long awaited second book, titled Bounce, has finally arrived. From his (Barry Moltz's) website:

Conventional business wisdom tells us that there is always something to learn from failure. Not true--sometimes it just stinks! Failure that offers no real learning value becomes a big jolt to the basic business belief system.

Barry's gift is that he uses humor to offer lessons that all entrepreneurs can learn from. During his last visit to Belmont, Barry offered some glimpses of what he planned to explore in his new book. Just like with his first book You Need to be a Little Crazy, this book is a must read for entrepreneurs at any stage of their development.

Barry demonstrates that developing the resiliency to 'bounce" through these cycles determines who ultimately will succeed. Using real life business examples, he shows that with true business confidence, we can face our fears, let go of shame and failures, use all our choices, be better risk-takers, and define our own brand of success.

Artisans: The Future of Small Business III

Both the Entrepreneurial Mind and Small Business Trends write about the Future of Small Business--Third Installment and the new Artisan Economy. This means that creativity and innovation are important resources for the future and learning becomes an investment.

Dr. Cornwall of the Entrepreneurial Mind does so on 2/13/08 Future of Small Business -- Third Installment

The good folks at the Institute for the Future in California have issued their third and final installment of the Future of Small Business reports.

Artisans, historically defined as skilled craftsmen who fashioned goods by hand, will re-emerge as an influential force in the coming decade. These next-gen artisans will craft their goods and shape the economy -- through upswings and downturns -- with an effect reaching far beyond their neighborhoods, or even their nations. They'll work differently than their medieval counterparts, combining brain with brawn as advances in technology and the reaches of globalization give them greater opportunities to succeed. This series offers a fascinating look at the future of out entrepreneurial economy.

In the post "Are You Part of the New Artisan Economy? I Bet You Are", Anita Campbell of Small Business Advice|Small Business Trends on the same day also writes about the third installment of the Future of Small Business Report outlining the growth of artisan businesses. She goes further providing more insights regarding the new economy:

Welcome to the artisan economy of the 21st century. Chances are, you're part of it. Don't let the word "artisan" fool you. If you're picturing bakers in white aprons kneading loaves of whole-grain bread, or someone hand-crafting candles — that's not necessarily what I mean.

The 21st century artisan is a Web designer, or an author, or a manufacturer of a small but exclusive line of luxury items, or a consultant in a niche speciality, or an entrepreneurial-minded attorney who starts selling information products, or an online retailer, or a software developer, or … the list goes on.

See her full post as for What it Means to You

My thought is this: if you don't see potential new opportunities from thinking about the trends in this Report, you aren't thinking hard enough.

So let your mind loose. Free yourself of old ideas that may be holding you back. Or what you think may be society's perceptions.

Tagging Lessons Learned, Learned Again

One of the lessons learned during this weblog experiment is how useful tagging is for both organizing and discovering new website of particular interest. The favorite tagging system for this weblog is still del.icio.us which still has the greatest level of participation regarding websites in which I am generally interested. Another benefit is the ease with which different concepts can be combined.

A combination that should have been obvious to this weblog before this are combining the tag creative-destruction and the tag entrepreneurship. The combination of creative-destruction/entrepreneurship brings up some expected and already discovered results, but it also brings up some new insights that have been added to the online MyStuff Creative-Destruction folder. Whether the online folder is preferable to the del.icio.us tags may be a matter of preference.

We are trusting each others tagging assignations though over time and wide enough participation this seems to work out. Sites are unlikely to be widely miss-tagged. What would seems to need to happen is the constant application or combination of new ideas and concepts. One could, of course, always choose the combined term and Google it instead, getting day one 138,000, day two 150,000 websites to select from, but then there isn't the social verification component, for whatever that is actually worth.

Curious And Curiouser Layer By Layer

Curious via Seth's Blog offered the following on 1/21/08

Nic created the video below--the subtitles and edits are his. The bad cold is mine. I hope you like it (the video, not the cold).

Also from Seth's Blog Layering on 1/22/08

Here's what we used to do:
Create ---> Edit ---> Launch

Here's what happens now:
Create ---> Launch ---> Edit ---> Launch ---> repeat

Someone asked me which post on this blog represented the turning point of its growth. The 'breakthrough' post. It turns out that there wasn't one. Instead, there were 2,500 posts, one after the other, each building (and I was learning from each) as we went. And thus the challenge. We live in a layered world now. Those that plan and plan and then launch are always going to be at a disadvantage to the layerers.

The Entrepreneurial Mind on 1/17/08 also has a perspective on whether To Plan, Or Not to Plan.

I don't believe that this is in opposition to what Seth Godin had said, just said differently from a different perspective. Dr. Campbell also expresses the idea that plans are not the holy grail of entrepreneurship and when he writes that he will have to adjust my plan each step along the way, I think of Seth Godin's layering.

We set business plans up on a pedestal as if it is the holy grail of entrepreneurship. Just look at BusinessWeek.com's most recent special issue on entrepreneurship -- it is all about business planning.

It is as if we are telling aspiring entrepreneurs that once they unlock the secrets of the business plan, the world of entrepreneurial wealth will come pouring out at them. Sorry, but this is just not true.

On the other hand, there is now a debate raging as to whether we should even teach entrepreneurs about business plans.

All of this -- and I mean both sides of this debate -- is missing the point.

So why do we teach about business plans? It is because they are a way to help organize what can be a complex and overwhelming array of issues. It is because it forces us to integrate our marketing plans, or operating plans and our financial plans into one, coherent story.

But I still plan. I just know that I will have to adjust my plan each step along the way as I begin to implement it as I start and grow my business.

The Entrepreneurial Mind also tells us that Growth is Never a Smooth Curve

The truth is that growth is a messy thing. It never follows a smooth path. The real curves that signify growth are jagged. Growth is lumpy, not smooth.

Growth requires us to make leaps of faith as we commit to significant new overhead, including more space, more equipment and more staff.

And in today's dynamic economy, a growing business is like the shark -- it has to keep moving forward, or it will drown.

The commitment to growth requires careful thought and careful planning. Never grow simply on faith and hope. Grow with a careful plan that tells you what challenges your decision to grow will create.

Is this in disagreement with what was said above? I don't believe so. This goes back to Seth Godin's point about maintaining curiosity, because curiosity is to my mind the pre-commitment to immerse our selves in a chosen field to learn all we can and endeavor to make it better. This post only touches lightly upon Dr. Campbell's ideas. His full post better expresses the balance that entrepreneurs need to achieve.

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.

IdeaBlob Best Idea Yet

This is the site Ideablob mentioned in the Firing Up FeedBurner post . According to that post, the del.icio.us posting of Ideablob had received 19 clicks which was just one below first place position. As of today it has received 51 clicks, more than twice of the former first place.

The are no illusions as to the impact of this weblog on the world of Web 2.o, so if it is the best used site for this weblog it is because of its own usefulness and popularity. I can only imagine what it is doing at other sites. It also supports Barger's point .

1. A true weblog is a log of all the URLs you want to save or share. (So del.icio.us is actually better for blogging than blogger.com.)

It also not only provides funding for business oriented entrepreneurial efforts but social-entrepreneurial efforts as well as the following post from Entrepreneurial Mind demonstrates.

The Entrepreneurial Mind: Social Enterprise Latest Ideablob Winner

A social enterprise is the latest monthly $10,000 Ideablob winner.

Marci Bossow Schankweiler of North Wales, PA is President and founder of Crossing the Finish Line (CFL), a Blue Bell, PA-based non-profit organization that provides excursions for young adult cancer patients and their families. Schankweiler founded CFL after her first husband passed away from cancer at the age of 30. She plans to use the prize money to help fund a home for cancer patients near Orlando, FL.

Vote for Andy

This also came from Entrepreneurial Mind

One of our students here at Belmont is a finalist for this round of ideablob.com voting. If you haven't been to the site, think of it as a monthly American Idol for business ideas with voting taking place at the website.

Andy Tabar is one of our student practicing entrepreneurs trying to build his web-based business. It is easy to vote. Just go to the ideablob.com website and register. After you have go back to the main page for ideablob.com and vote for Andy's entry "Expand my global tech company" idea. Please go to ideablob.com and vote for Andy!!

So, since I am getting a number of hits on this I am going to post Entrepreneurial Mind post on del.icio.us to see if I can't get at least a couple of vote for Andy. Supposedly voting is open to January 7 though it may be too late.

But it is not really that simple

New Therapy for Stroke Patients

Also looks like a great idea.

Idea Description

Utilizing newest neuro-science/mind-body medicine/quantum physics, I would present a non-invasive, cutting-edge complementary therapy for stroke patients.
Data destroyed by stroke, exists in other areas of the brain in different forms. By contacting parts of the brain previously less directly employed, but still connected to stored data, we reach out to old functions by recognition of past action, impression, perception and emotion. Once accessed, new pathways are created to retrieve information.
Stimulation by light/touch/smell/laughter/nature/art/music..allows the brain to access alternative routes leading to the back doors of lost information affording a more rapid return to function.

This idea appears to have more votes. I have to wonder though to what degree has this "technology" been tested so that the question of licensing can be better addressed. If it is viable, should IdeaBlob be the source of funding or are there more relevant sources of funding out there? Being even an "armchair-virtual" venture capitalist is not all that easy.

Define Who You Are For Yourself Before Defining For Others

A previous post dealt with having, "your organization's portrayal or public face firmly established in the mind of all of your members." What that is can be based on one of two foundations either:

• What You Love
• or
• Who You Are

Sam Davidson gives his perspective on advise from Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist.

CoolPeopleCare | Penelope's Advice: Do What You Are
Should you do what you love or do what you are? What if both of those change?

Penelope Trunk, whom I had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks ago in Madison,has just written what I think is her best piece. She trashes the common career advice of, "Do what you love." She takes to task the impossibility and unfeasibility of this advice, claiming that:

"Often, the thing we should do for our career is something we would only do if we were getting a reward. If you tell yourself that your job has to be something you'd do even if you didn't get paid, you'll be looking for a long time. Maybe forever. So why set that standard? The reward for doing a job is contributing to something larger than you are, participating in society, and being valued in the form of money."

Sam continues his philosophical musings.

CoolPeopleCare | But What If I Love Entrepreneurship?

Should I do what I love or do what I am? But what if I want to make my passion my profession?

Yesterday, I highlighted Penelope Trunk's recent condemnation of the career advice, "Do what you love." In its place she suggests that people "Do what they are." I agreed.

But I soon began to think about entrepreneurs. Many people embrace the notion of entrepreneurship in order to do what they love. They start jobs and companies in order to turn their passion into their profession.

So are they being misguided? Should they be steered away from trying to base a business on something they love?

Or should every entrepreneurship course be prefaced with Penelope's advice, steering budding starters away from basing a concept on a love and instead basing it on who they are?

Or, by only changing one word in a tired maxim, is Penelope really just saying the same thing?

The Businesspundit questions the ability of some of his generation's ability to meet the challenges of being an entrepreneur.The Businesspundit: Not Built For Business: Are We The Greatest Generation?

David Brooks calls the years when members of my generation wander in their 20s "the odyssey years." We move between careers, get our traveling itch done and experiment with startups. Ben Casnocha, an entrepreneur who hasn't even reached his "odyssey years" yet, encourages exploration but not without setting goals-no doodling on Taco Cabana bags and Twinkie wrappers, people. In the August issue of Maxim, Mark Cuban championed an even more daring quest in a feature on "CEO Secrets."

As this post is already getting long enough, I am going to make additional comments at another post.

Forwarding webpages with highlights and sticky notes, powered by Diigo

Global Paradigm Shift Through Global Innovation

Innovation
In attempting to be more precise in assigning relevant meaning to tags I have been using, I have used the tag innovation as applied to those creative changes that have had some economic impact, whether we classify them as high or low or business or social entrepreneurship, as opposed to pure creativity as in art.

The Entrepreneurial Mind back on 12/10/07 gave us Innovation Around the Globe which cites the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship's reports on two new studies highlighting innovation in Asia and Europe.

"A new World Bank study examines the state of innovation in East Asia with a focus on three primary sources of knowledge flow into the region: international trade, acquisition of disembodied knowledge, and foreign direct investment. East Asian economies still rely heavily on knowledge flows from Japan and the US, but the region's economies are beginning to build their own home-based knowledge industries as well."

All three primary sources of knowledge are of interest but what is especially in disembodied knowledge. The second study is a new Information Technology and Innovation Policy Foundation report:

"[F]uture European prosperity depends upon Europe's ability to more effectively deploy information and communications technologies (ICT). The study notes that European productivity growth rates have lagged in recent years, and it identifies lagging use of ICT (especially in service sectors) as one culprit in the process. Like the US, Europe needs to boost productivity rates. But the pressures in Europe are even stronger, due to a more rapidly aging population. How can Europe reverse these trends? The report's author, Rob Atkinson, recommends greater overall private investment in ICT, the creation of public incentives to support such investment, and expanded efforts to promote digital literacy and adoption among the general population of European countries."

Professor Cornwall makes it clear where he falls on the economic philosophical continuum.

"Let us hope that by the phrase "more effective government supports" the authorsare referring to what has proven to be the most effective government support for entrepreneurship -- bureaucrats and politicians getting out of the way of entrepreneurs and letting free markets work. Central planning efforts where government agencies try to pick winners and losers have never proven to be a wise long-term strategy. "

"The most effective means of encouraging private investment is making favorable policy decision for an entrepreneurial economy. Lower taxes, less regulation, and stronger property rights are all key elements. I am afraid that most of Europe has a very long way to go on all three of these critical issues of public policy."

I have to confess to some doubts to this position when I consider the amount of support that Asian countries, especially Japan, have given their businesses. I also have to wonder about the technological bump Asia got from the IT infrastructure investment that was made and how we keep on falling farther and farther behind. I am definitely not in favor of centralized planning but I am also still not willing to fully depend upon the unfettered free market. Perhaps after a few more economic courses I will change my mind.

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.

Like Trying to Milk a Fish

The Entrepreneurial Mind wrote Like Trying to Milk a Fish on 11/30/07

The concept of social entrepreneurship has also been explored a number of times by this weblog. Jeff Cornwall introduces us to social entrepreneur Sam Davidson has a thoughtful reflection who at his blog tells us about what it is like being an early-stage entrepreneur.

Those who know me know that I never planned on being an entrepreneur, but that I enjoy every single minute of it. There's risk, there's reward, there's freedom, there's excitement, there's disappointment, there's opportunity - and that's just Monday before lunch. And so when people ask me what it's like to start my own company and be a social entrepreneur, I tell them:

"It's like trying to milk a fish."

Sam is a co-founder and President of CoolPeopleCare

Below is a short video from their website on who they are.

Little Ideas Are The Pathway To Big Sucess

Big Ideas (Meatball Mondae 11) via Seth's Blog 12/3/07 gives me an excuse to bring up another article that I posted but never dealt with to the extent that I wanted.

Seth points out that in a factory-based organization, "little ideas are the key to success".

"Small improvements in efficiency or design can improve productivity and make a product just a bit more appealing. New Marketing, which exists in the noisy marketplace, demands something bigger. It demands ideas that force people to sit up and take notice."

"Today, the advertiser's big idea doesn't travel very well. Instead, the idea must be embedded into the experience of the product itself. Once again, what we used to think of as advertising or marketing is pushed deeper into the organization. Let the brilliant ad guys hang out with your R&D team and watch what happens. Yes, there are big ideas. They're just not advertising-based."

This is a pretty profound statement from a marketer. He does not say it explicitly, but the noisy marketplace of New Marketing seems to break out of the Henry Ford industrial assembly model. Regardless, it involves innovation and Seth is asserting that innovation belongs in all components of the organization at a fundamentally deep level. The whole Seth Godin meatball series is here.

This supporting article from the Christian Science Monitor is on, "How companies can encourage innovation."

"We're moving from an industrial economy to a creative economy," says Richard Florida, author of "The Rise of the Creative Class,"

In a new survey, the Innovation Institute, "finds a "creativity gap" in the workplace – a disparity between the creative resources available and those being used. While a vast majority of American workers (88 percent) consider themselves creative, fewer than 2 in 3 think they are tapping their creative capacities on the job. Nearly 30 percent say they would take a lower salary to work for a company that valued their creative input. And 1 in 5 say they would move to a different city to work for such a company."

Two other factors – a rise in entrepreneurship and more women in business – also promote innovation, says Vicki Donlan, author of "Her Turn: Why It's Time for Women to Lead in America." Many women tell her they left a corporate job because they lacked opportunities to use their creativity.