Entrepreneurship Briefs

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.
-Tom Peters

NYtimes

We have never been big on those inspirational posters that uninspiring managers put up on the office walls. You know the ones. They show a picture of a kitten desperately grasping a tree branch with a caption like, “Hang in there, baby,” or a lone eagle flying above the countryside, with the words “Dare to soar.”Still, we can all use a bit of inspiration now and then. READ FULL STORY

NYTimes
LAS VEGAS — To the dismay of safety advocates already worried about driver distraction, automakers and high-tech companies have found a new place to put sophisticated Internet-connected computers: the front seat.
Technology giants like Intel and Google are turning their attention from the desktop to the dashboard, hoping to bring the power of the PC to the car.
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“As venture capitalists,” Kawasaki said, “we deal with many companies, and often they come in [saying what] they think we want to hear: that they want to make money. It’s been my observation that most companies founded on this concept of making money pretty much fail. They attract the wrong kind of co-founders and early employees.” Rather, he says, entrepreneurs should focus on making their product or service mean something beyond the sum of its components — and the money may very well follow. He noted how Nike made its aerobic sneakers for women into more than just “two pieces of cotton, leather and rubber, manufactured under somewhat suspect conditions in the Far East.” With smart advertising about how women traditionally have been measured and judged, Nike “turned $2.50 of raw materials into something that stands for efficacy and power and liberation. They are making meaning with shoes. Great companies make meaning.” Certainly, Apple has done that with the Mac, iPhone and other devices.

Due Diligence: The inquiry process of obtaining sufficient and accurate disclosure of all material documents and other information which may influence the outcome of the transaction.

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein

Consumer Direct Marketing: A form of Network Marketing in which the distributors are all also consumers, i.e., they must also buy the product for their personal use.

We may not be able to miniaturize a submarine to the size where it can travel a patient’s bloodstream (as in Fantastic Voyage), but scientists predict we may soon be able to save the data equivalent of 250 DVDs on a chip the sign of a coin. The nanotechnology would use commercially produced sapphire crystals heated to more than 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit for 24 hours, reports the Discover Magazine Web site. Scientists at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst say that the technology could create semiconductor materials that are approximately 15 times denser than those produced before now.

Why do some geographic areas — such as California’s Silicon Valley — produce so many entrepreneurial companies? The answer may be workplace peers. Working with former entrepreneurs makes individuals more likely to start their own businesses, says Professor Jesper Sorensen of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. read more

Test fast, fail fast, adjust fast.
-Tom Peters