Dr Jeff Cornwall

Inc.com reports on a survey of small business owners:
“(S)mall businesses reported doing well and expressed confidence that the second half of 2004 will be even better, according to a new survey.
“Nearly 70 percent of small businesses surveyed by International Profit Associates, Inc., a small business consulting firm, said they met or exceeded their expectations in the first half. Looking to the second half, 88 percent forecasted that they’ll meet or beat their projections.
“Despite confidence about the future, businesses are still planning on keeping spending under control. More than half of those polled indicated that they will maintain their current level of capital spending, while 15 percent said they would reduce spending from their original budgets. A little more than 30 percent said they intend to raise capital spending.”
Since entrepreneurs are the source of most of the current economic growth, this is indeed good news.

Hello from New Orleans!
I am down here at a convention of academics known as the Academy of Management. I was shocked to learn this year that of the 17,000 members, ten percent are part of the entrepreneurship division of this august organization. That is amazing to me, given that this is a fairly traditional, corporate-oriented group of faculty. And my own favorite academic group, United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE), has grown to almost 800 members.
When a group of academics interested in entrepreneurship got together in the 1980s, we were lucky to get fifty of us together.
It is indeed a new area for business in America.

Drakeview linked to my recent post “What If?” in which I talked about the need to plan ahead for the possible aftermath from another terrorist attack in their piece about the importance of security programs. They cite a Conference Board survey on security programs in companies of various sizes. Security programs are designed to help businesses plan for the inevitable “bumps in the road” or even “major road blocks and detours” that inevitably get in the way of day-to-day operations of any going concern.
“Security is strongest among “critical-industries” those that typically have to dedicate resources to make sure that their essential products and services are reliable and available – transportation, energy and utilities, financial services, media and telecommunications, information technology, and healthcare. They have a lot of experience with minor recurring service disruptions brought about by weather or natural disaster. They can prepare for a somewhat reliable set of circumstances – hurricanes are going to blow, blizzards are going to fall, forest fires are going to burn. Only the date and duration of these events are unknown.”
Small businesses are the least prepared, and the most vulnerable. In addition to the suggestions I raised, they point out that it is possible to purchase insurance to cover such losses. It is not a standard part of business insurance in many cases, but it is probably worth considering adding such coverage, for as we all know, “stuff happens.”

Paula Lovell sent me this article about the explosion of students starting businesses while in college. It is happening on almost any campus in the country these days. More evidence that the entrepreneurial economy is alive and well.
One of the first new programs that we opened when I arrived at Belmont is our Student Business Hatchery, which is designed to serve just this kind of entrepreneurial student. It is a two room office that provides the basic business infrastructure to support students running businesses on campus. They have access to computers, a fax machine, a copier, file space, and conference table, and so forth. All resources are shared on a cooperative basis (first come, first served). Any student who has a business up and running (or at least close to up and running) is eligible, no matter what major they are studying. If they believe it could help them in running their business, they fill out a brief application and are admitted to the program. In the first year at our small university we had twenty students representing eleven different businesses (most formally incorporated) in our Hatchery Program.
Due to its success, we will be expanding the Hatchery Program this year to include a second location on campus to serve more developed businesses. This expansion is funded in part by a grant we received from the Coleman Foundation.
Several of the students who operated businesses in the Hatchery last year have graduated and are now working on these ventures full time in the outside world. We continue to offer advising and networking assistance, but they are launched from the Hatchery into their own space. They are beginning to hire employees, buy equipment, etc., helping in their own way to expand the entrepreneurial base to our local economy.

This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists has a particularly rich collection of posts. Visit it today at Business Evolutionist.