The National Center for Small Communities has put together a best practices guide for supporting entrepreneurial economic growth in small towns. This is a very comprehensive guide for effective and sustainable economic development. Here is the complete study.
This is no jobless recovery
Bill Hobbs offers his latest report on the myth of the jobless recovery. This includes some very powerful evidence of how well the economy is actually doing.
Growing Pains
Here is a quote that Dr. Susan Williams of Belmont University passed along to me. It describes so well the experience that many of us have gone through as our businesses go through periods of rapid growth and change. For me it describes both what I experienced and what our business experienced.
“Everything alive is surprisingly alive– and on a twitchy, searching, self-aware, self-organizing upward journey. Such living systems periodically break into severe twitchiness and appear to fall apart. They do not. It is actually at such vibrating times that living systems are shaking themselves to higher ground. Transition to a higher order is universally accompanied by turbulence. The disorder and disharmony is a necessary activation of growth to a higher level. The greater the turbulence, the more often it will go into apparent disharmony in order to re-jiggle itself to a higher level.” Ilya Prigogine, Nobel physicist.
Entrepreneurial Blocking and Tackling
When prospective entrepreneurs talk with me, many want to know what they need to learn about to improve their chances of success. I tell them that Vince Lombardi had it right: you have to know the basics. Blocking and tackling.
Good Advice from Fred Smith
Dr. Susan Williams, a colleague of mine here at Belmont, passed along this link to remarks that Fred Smith, Chairman, President and CEO of FedEx Corporation gave to a conference on entrepreneurship in the Dominican Republic in 2001. His five key points are as good a basic set of ideas as I have seen. Any potential entrepreneur would be well served to think very carefully about Mr. Smith?s words of advice.
Google and the IPO Myth
There has been much speculation about a possible IPO by Google in the near future. Although this may be necessary to satisfy the VC’s that backed the company, it is a step that should be taken with great care.
thanks brett!
First, I must make a full disclosure: I am an NFL owner. That’s right, I own one share of the Green Bay Packers. As a life-long Packer fan, I want to thank the team, and particularly Brett Favre, for such an exciting season. We did not have very high expectations this year, so all of the end of the year heroics were frosting on the cake.
The Pack will be back next year!
Beware of building up inventory
I have been getting more and more calls from folks thinking about opening up a retail business. This is typical as an economy begins to recover. Probably the single biggest risk, especially in the days of big box stores like Best Buy and Wal-Mart, is poorly manged inventory and pricing. We offer this classic article from the archives of INC magazine to any of you who are thinking about or acting on a plan to go into retail or are expanding your current retail operation.
if you teach a man to fish…
Once in a while the govenment gets something right. The Appalacian Reional Commission has funded a set of initiatives that are supporting entrepreneurship in this region at a grassroots level.
Venture Capital Update
Although warming up a bit, the venture capital market is no where near the scalding hot level of activity of a few years ago. This site gives a good analysis of the state of the venture capital world today.