The U.S. government plans to propose broad new rules Monday that would force Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally, seeking to give consumers greater freedom to use their computers or cellphones to enjoy videos, music and other legal services that hog bandwidth.
The move would make good on a campaign promise to Silicon Valley supporters like Google Inc. from President Barack Obama, but will trigger a battle with phone and cable companies like AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp., which don't want the government telling them how to run their networks.
Treating Web traffic equally means carriers couldn't block or slow access to legal services or sites that are a drain on their networks or offered by rivals.
» Reuters [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
» Wall Street Journal
» Washington Post
US business group warns of swine flu absenteeism The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Friday offered companies new guidelines for coping with the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, warning that employers could face crippling absenteeism as the U.S. flu season takes hold.
People wearing surgical masks to prevent swine fluIn the 16-page volume titled, "It's Not Flu as Usual: An H1N1 Business Preparedness Guide," the largest American business federation presented scenarios in which more than 10 percent of staff are too sick to come to work an any given day over the course of several months to a year.
"Absenteeism will be the central issue that businesses wrestle with during this pandemic," said Ann Beauchesne, who leads the chamber's national security and emergency preparedness program.
» CNBC [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
Is there any human invention more duplicitous than the personal computer? These machines were manufactured and initially marketed as devices to help us at work. We were told they would perform amazing feats of office derring-do — adding up rows of numbers effortlessly, turning our musings into beautiful magazine-quality documents, and letting us collaborate with one another across continents.
» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
Companies have already rethought rates. Under the new law, issuers can't raise them without 45 days' notice. But there's a loophole: The rules don't apply to variable-rate cards, with rates that float up and down. That's why companies are moving more consumers into such cards, whose rates are likely to soar from their record lows. Researcher Bankrate.com (RATE) estimates variable-rate cards will account for 75% of all cards this year, up from 65% in 2008.
Fees have been another area of focus. Starting in February, lenders won't be able to charge consumers a penalty when they go over their credit limit. To make up for the lost revenue, issuers are coming up with a host of other penalties. Fifth Third Bank (FITB) started levying a $19 tariff if a borrower doesn't use the card for 12 months. Notes a Fifth Third spokeswoman: "The fee is used to encourage active use of accounts and to offset the increasing costs of accounts."
» Busness Week [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
On Thursday, the first of a set of new rules went into effect resulting from the landmark credit card legislation earlier this year.
Banks must now provide written notice to customers 45 days before increasing the interest rate or changing the terms on a card. So banks raced to get out in front of that requirement, making a bunch of changes before Thursday, lest they have to give you a month and a half of warning.
Irritated by the changes? Inclined to take your business elsewhere now? This is exactly the right instinct, since plenty of people can still get a better deal from a different card. Fee-free balance transfers still exist. And banks have barely touched the most lucrative rewards programs — and wouldn’t dare fiddle too much given the revenue they generate.
The best revenge is a better card. Here’s how to find one.
» NY Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
Computing and communicating through the Web makes it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview; a lost or stolen laptop can expose personal photos or messages; or a legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating or just embarrassing details from the past.
Vanish is a research system designed to give users control over the lifetime of personal data stored on the web or in the cloud. Specifically, all copies of Vanish encrypted data — even archived or cached copies — will become permanently unreadable at a specific time, without any action on the part of the user or any third party or centralized service.
For example, using the Firefox Vanish plugin, a user can create an email, a Google Doc document, a Facebook message, or a blog comment — specifying that the document or message should "vanish" in 8 hours. Before that 8-hour timeout expires, anyone who has access to the data can read it; however after that timer expires, nobody can read that web content — not the user, not Google, not Facebook, not a hacker who breaks into the cloud service, and not even someone who obtains a warrant for that data. That data — regardless of where stored or archived prior to the timeout — simply self-destructs and becomes permanently unreadable.
» Vanish / Washington edu [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
Recovery from the worst recession since the 1930s has begun as President Barack Obama’s fiscal stimulus -- derided as insufficient and budget-busting months ago -- takes effect, a survey of economists indicated.
The economy will expand 2 percent or more in four straight quarters through June, the first such streak in more than four years, according to the median of 53 forecasts in the monthly Bloomberg News survey. Analysts lifted their estimate for the third quarter by 1.2 percentage points compared with July, the biggest such boost in surveys dating from May 2003.
» Bloomberg [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone
» WSJ [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
Apple is justifiably revered in the worlds of technology and culture for creating one of the most powerful brands in the world based on the combination of some key elements: Great user experience and design, and an extraordinary secrecy punctuated by surprising reveals. But the element of secrecy that's been required to maintain Apple's mystique has incurred an increasingly costly price. Apple must transform itself and leave its history of secrecy behind, not just to continue being innovative and to protect the fundamentals of its business, but because the cost of keeping these secrets has become morally and ethically untenable.
» Anil Dash [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
Google Books engineering director Dan Clancy spelled out the vision at a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Clancy stressed the importance of making it possible to buy the digital books in traditional bricks-and-mortar bookstores, as well as online.
"Right now the physical bookstores are a critical part of our book ecosystem," he said. "A huge amount of books are bought because people go into a physical bookstore and say, hey I want this, I want that. It's a mistake if we think of our future digital world as digital means online and physical means offline. Because if that happens and 10 percent of the world goes digital, that's going to be really hard for all the bookstores to sustain their business model."
Dan Clancy comments:
People look at the settlement [with the Authors Guild and the AAP] and think that that is Google's vision for what the future looks like for books. And in fact the settlement is what we figured out for these predominantly out-of-print books, so it's more about the past. And in fact we've done a lot of thinking about what is the role we want to play going forward in a digital book world, for new books.
There are [three] things we put as requirements.
One is I believe people want their books stored in the cloud.... For most people, your library is something that you don't pull books off all that often, but when you need it, you want it to be there. That's where a cloud really works. You're not going to actively manage it, but you want to make sure that five years from now, [it's there].
Number two, I think it's critical that there's diversity of choices in terms of retailers that you work with.
Now one of the things with the cloud is that the consumer needs to trust that the person who's providing the cloud will be there. So you don't trust the cloud to some new startup that you've never heard of, or some small local bookstore, that you love to go to.
But right now the physical bookstores are a critical part of our book ecosystem. And in fact a huge amount of books are bought because people go into a physical bookstore and say, hey I want this, I want that. And I think it's a mistake if we think of our future digital world as digital means online and physical means offline. Because if that happens and 10 percent of the world goes digital, that's going to be really hard for all the bookstores to sustain their business model.
So part of our model is to figure out we're going to syndicate for our partner program all of the books we sell that are new, so that any bookstore can sell a Google edition and find a way that people can buy them in bricks and mortar stores as well.
And then finally, our model is you should be able to read on any device.... Our model is some people will read [our books] on a laptop, some will read them on the phone, some people will read on their netbook, and some people will read on their e-reader. And we'll work with any reader provider that wants to make it so they can get their books from the Google cloud....
So the principles of our future world is trying to build this world where there's lots of retail players, read on any device, but it's still stored in the cloud. And as we talk with publishers and booksellers, I think this is the right model, because we're trying to make what would be an open model that encourages competition
» Blog2 [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
Although the venture capital industry is having a hard time convincing endowments, pension funds and other limited partners to invest new capital in the asset class, the majority of venture firms still plan to raise a new fund in the next 12 months - if a new survey from Pepperdeine University is to be believed.
» WSJ [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
Records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act show the public is paying to offset bank losses on small business loans across the country, from a convenience story in the tiny Canadian border town of Houlton, Maine, to a graphic arts design company on the island of Hawaii, more than 5,000 miles away.
"This could be the first economic recovery we've seen in a long time that hits small business the hardest the longest," he said. The Small Business Administration purchased $2.1 billion in bad loans from lenders last year. Agency officials say it's likely that this year will see another high as the recession nears the two-year mark.
» CNBC [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
The economic downturn has been very good for one sector - cybercrime. Stephen Pritchard reports. Plus - how far has homeworking progressed?
[ MP3 ] Cybercrime and working from home
A meeting I had recently with some folks at Gillette highlighted an important issue facing the would-be innovator — the "curse of knowledge."
Chip and Dan Heath described the curse of knowledge nicely in their 2007 book Made to Stick (highly recommended to all innovators). The basic problem: people who have deep knowledge about a topic sometimes assume other people have that same knowledge. That can lead to major missteps.
» Harvard Business [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]
Young people make better entrepreneurs because they're too inexperienced to know that their ideas are silly:
The mistakes novices make come from a lack of experience. They overestimate mere fads, seeing revolution everywhere, and they make this kind of mistake a thousand times before they learn better. But the experts make the opposite mistake, so that when a real once-in-a-lifetime change comes along, they regard it as a fad. As a result of this asymmetry, the novice makes their one good call during an actual revolution, at exactly the same time the expert makes their one big mistake, but at that moment, that’s all that is needed to give the newcomer a considerable edge.
» corante.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]
Tired after lunch or by mid-afternoon? You might think that you should go buy yourself some coffee. But according to UCSD researcher Sara Mednick, you’re better off taking a nap.
Nappers make fewer mistakes, are in a better mood and in better health, she said. “It also feels good,” she added. “And what’s wrong with that?” Napping also is important because many of us today say they have trouble sleeping, Mednick said. According to the National Sleep Foundation, about 40 percent of Americans report that they sleep less than seven hours a night – as opposed to the recommended eight hours. Everyone is affected, from infants to older adults, the researcher said.
Some of her most striking research looks at napping compared to drinking caffeine. In one study, Mednick had one group of subjects nap for 90 minutes, while another drank 200 mg of caffeine. She also set up a control group, who took a placebo. Then she tested her subjects on several tasks, including typing and spatial skills, such as remembering the layout of a room or a map. On both tasks, coffee drinkers performed much worse than the placebo group, Mednick said. “Of course, this is a bummer for Starbucks,” she added.
Organizations increasingly rely on teams to carry out critical strategies and operational tasks. How do teams learn, and what factors are most important to team learning? This paper reports on current perspectives and findings that address these questions, looking at empirical studies on team learning from three areas of research: outcome improvement, task mastery, and group process. Overall, Edmondson and coauthors characterize the nature of research to date and assemble what is known and unknown about the theoretically and practically important topic of team learning. Key concepts include:
The headlines tell the tale. Baby boomer retirements, an aging workforce, a highly competitive global marketplace for talent, international expansion. It’s clear that businesses in America and around the world are being critically challenged. As baby boomers retire, companies everywhere are about to face a chronic labor shortage unlike any they have ever seen. And this crisis is expected to last for decades. Companies will likely struggle just to maintain their current market position, much less grow.
[mp3] Listen or Download / DeloitteInsights
"There is intense competition at the moment to hire the most talented and most intellectually able people ... We have a shortage of talent both within countries and between countries, and there is an intense battle between companies trying to hire the most talented workers and also between countries which are looking to recruit talented young immigrants."
[mp3] Listen or Download / The Economist
Every managerial generation rediscovers the need for innovation to drive growth but, decade after decade, "grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in quiet cost-cutting drives." So observes Rosabeth Moss Kanter in a new Harvard Business Review article, "Innovation: The Classic Traps."
In the crowded field of US venture capital, where arguably too much money is chasing the available quality investments and some firms bemoaning the industry's prospects , Sequoia Capital is on something of a run. Having reaped a reported $495m - or 43-fold return - on its investment in YouTube.
VC Ratings points to a new feature on the company's website - a list of 10 characteristics that Sequoia, which backed both Yahoo! and Google, looks for in companies and advice on submitting a business plan.
Whatever the product is, who could resist? And under the mysterious heading of "Inferno" - it concludes, "start with only a little money. It forces discipline and focus. A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower." How refreshing.
» Search Financial-Specific Tags: VC Advice - Venture Capital
» sequoiacap.com/ideas
In the 26 years I've been in business, I've come to realize that there are two types of people who start companies: those who like risk, and those who don't. Whichever type you may be, there are challenges you need to confront if you want to build your business. Entrepreneurs of the first type had better learn how to rein in their risk-taking, or they'll make bad decisions that put their companies in jeopardy. Those of the second type have to understand that you can't grow without taking risks. The relevant questions are, how much risk can you handle, and how much is required to get you where you want to go?
» inc.com
With me today is Richard Tedlow, a noted business historian on the HBS faculty and the MBA class of 1949 Professor of Business Administration. His latest book (Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American) is a biography of Andy Grove, a founding father of Intel, which has gone from startup status in 1968, to a ranking of number 49 on the latest Fortune 500 listing. Anyone with a computer is familiar with the phrase "Intel Inside." With this book, professor Tedlow has taken us inside Andy Grove. Richard, it's great to have you with us today.
[mp3] Podcast
Interviewer: James Aisner - Running Time: 29 min. November 9, 2006
James Aisner is director of Media Relations and a senior editor for Harvard Business School.
It's the season for many employee performance reviews. Why do they seem to rank alongside root canal dental work on our list of things we look forward to as managers and employees? And what are we doing about it?
If we assume that the basic purpose of employee evaluations is to build better-performing organizations, then this has to be one of the most important things we do as managers. But if formal evaluations weren't required, would we even provide them?
Much of this season's debate has centered around whether a forced ranking system works in such efforts. It was given visibility by its adoption at GE several years ago, where managers were forced to identify their direct reports in three categories on a "vitality curve": the top 20 percent, the "vital" 70 percent, and the bottom 10 percent. (Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, these are the de facto percentages used in the forced ranking system for students in required courses at this institution.) Although the system has been modified somewhat in its application, it still triggers advice to those being ranked, especially those in the bottom category who may be given help or advised to leave the organization.
Proponents of forced ranking claim that it is more humane and effective than most qualitative systems for employee appraisal in which employees don't receive frank appraisals because managers are not able or willing to give them. This helps avert surprises, or worse, lawsuits, when poorly-performing employees are fired. Opponents claim that it hurts such things as teamwork and innovation. What little research there is on forced ranking systems suggests that they produce a short-term improvement in performance that soon levels out, perhaps because the worst performers are weeded out in a timely fashion.
Perhaps a more important issue is the objective of the review itself. Is it to weed out poor performers? To recognize the so-called A players? To provide the basis for compensation decisions? To provide clues to future opportunity within the organization? To map out an individual plan for personal development? All of these? Too often this is unclear. Is it any wonder then that managers, many of whom receive little or no training in how to do it, conduct the task of reviewing performance so poorly?
The questions all of this brings to mind include: What can we do to make performance reviews more productive and less distasteful? Should their objectives be scaled back to just one or two? Should they be disengaged from the determination of compensation and, if so, how? As managers, should we invest time to keep a day-to-day scorecard on individual qualitative and quantitative performance and feed back impressions to employees on an ongoing basis? Should periodic performance reviews be relatively incidental as opposed to regular coaching "in the moment"? (After all, aren't we all teachers?) Should less emphasis be placed on looking backward and more on how to improve future performance? Should the process be renamed and redesigned as a "personal development review"? Should we put aside "forced ratings"? Just where does the process fit in building organizational performance? What do you think?
Small businesses are straining under the pressure of sharply rising health insurance costs, leading many employers to cut their employee coverage. To provide critical relief for smaller-sized companies, Medco Health Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:MHS) today announced the introduction of Generics First(TM), one of the nation's lowest cost generic prescription drug programs for small to mid-size businesses.
Generics First, an insured product available only through Medco's insurance partners via their licensed agents and brokers, is up to half the cost of traditional plans, with members receiving up to a 90-day supply of generic drugs for a $10 co-pay.
Medco is launching the Generics First product with Nationwide, a leader in insurance and financial services, who will be selling the product under the name Nationwide Select.
Many small businesses have seen their premiums rise as much as 50 percent over the past several years making health care costs the #1 issue they're facing, according to a recent study by the National Federation of Independent Business Trade Group. With the average generic drug costing approximately 70 percent less than its branded counterpart - and nearly 75 percent of all FDA approved drugs available in generic form - fully utilizing these lower-cost alternatives can mean the difference between a business providing an effective prescription drug plan for its employees or eliminating coverage altogether.
Frenzied corporate cultures still confuse sleeplessness with vitality and high performance. An ambitious manager logs 80-hour work weeks, surviving on five or six hours of sleep a night and eight cups of coffee (the world’s second-most widely sold commodity, after oil) a day. A Wall Street trader goes to bed at 11 or midnight and wakes to his BlackBerry buzz at 2:30 am to track opening activity on the DAX. A road warrior lives out of a suitcase while traveling to Tokyo, St. Louis, Miami, and Zurich, conducting business in a cloud of caffeinated jet lag. A negotiator takes a red-eye flight, hops into a rental car, and zooms through an unfamiliar city to make a delicate M&A meeting at 8 in the morning.
Via: HBR Sleep Deficit: The Performance Killer, October 2006
Through this portal you can access a growing range of SmallStartup
brand services.
Brand Name / Trademark: [ SmallStartup ]
A small business may be defined as a business with a small number of employees. The legal definition of "small" often varies by country and industry, but is generally under 100 employees. These businesses are normally privately owned corporations, partnerships, or sole proprietorships.
Small businesses are common in many countries, depending on the economic system in operation. Typical examples include: small shops, hairdressers, tradesmen, solicitors, lawyers, accountants, restaurants, guest houses, photographers, small-scale manufacturing etc. The smallest businesses, often located in private homes, are called microbusinesses.
Problems Faced By Small Businesses
Small businesses often face a variety of problems related to their size. A frequent cause of bankruptcy is undercapitalization. This is often a result of poor planning rather than economic conditions, it is common rule of thumb that the entrepreneur should have access to a sum of money at least equal to the projected revenue for the first year of business in addition to his anticipated expenses. For example if the prospective owner thinks that he will generate $100,000 in revenues in the first year with $150,000 in start-up expenses, then he should have no less than $250,000 available. Failure to provide this level of funding for the company could leave the owner liable for all of the company's debt should he end up in bankruptcy court, under the theory of undercapitalization.
In addition to insuring that the business has enough capital, the small business owner must also be mindful of gross margin (sales minus variable costs). To break even, the business must be able to reach a level of sales where the gross margin exceeds fixed costs. When they first start out, many small business owners underprice their products to a point where even at their maximum capacity, it would impossible to break even. The good news is that cost controls or a price increase can often resolve this problem.
In the United States, some of the largest concerns of small business owners are insurance costs (such as liability and health), rising energy costs and taxes. In the United Kingdom and Australia, small business owners tend to be more concerned with excessive governmental red tape.
Certification And Trust
Building trust with new customers can be a difficult task for a new and establishing business. Some organizations like the Better Business Bureau and the International Charter now offer Small Business Certification, which certifies the quality of the services and goods you produce and can encourage new and larger customers. These services may require a few hours of work, but a certification may reassure potential customers. However, the most effective way to earn trust is through customer referrals.
Personnel
A good accountant is a requirement. A retired person can usually be located for part-time work. There is a wide gulf between an accountant and a bookkeeper. An accountant can do everything from initial entry right through tax returns and financial statements.
Sources Of Funding
There are several sources available for start-up capital. The owner can finance it himself through his savings or an equity loan on his home or other assets. The owner could use financing via a stock issue (although there would be legal problems if it were offered to the general public). A partnership could be formed or perhaps a venture capitalist would provide funds if the business venture plans were sound enough. Relatives could also loan money but the owner should realize that if anyone else participates in the venture some elements of control will be lost.
Financing a business with credit card debt is usually a poor choice, the interest rate on credit cards is often several times the rate that would be paid on a line of credit or bank loan. Many owners seek a bank loan in the name of their business, however banks will usually insist on a personal guarantee by the business owner. In the United States, the Small Business Administration (SBA) runs several loan programs that may help a small business secure loans. In these programs, the SBA guarantees a portion of the loan to the issuing bank and thus relieves the bank of some of the risk of extending the loan to a small business.
Are you ready to become an online leader of a community of people who share your interests? Every Blog Opinion Leaders's mission is to create an simple, intuitive and gratifying experience for people interested in this topic.
The Perfect Small Startup Blog Writer/Editor has...
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Entrepreneur is an import from the same French word. In its most general sense, it means a person who creates or starts a new project, opportunity, or venture.
Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who establishes a new entity to offer a new or existing product or service into a new or existing market, whether for a profit or not-for-profit venture, a business entrepreneur. Business entrepreneurs often have strong beliefs about a market opportunity and are willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue that opportunity.
Research has demonstrated that there is such thing as an "entrepreneurial type," with certain characteristics (such as having a father or a mother who was an entrepreneur) linked to the probability of someone being an entrepreneur themselves. There is little good evidence, however, that entrepreneurial type is linked to ultimate success of an entrepeneurial venture.
Business entrepreneurs are often highly regarded in US culture as being a critical component of its capitalistic society. Famous entrepreneurs include: Henry Ford (automobiles), J. Pierpont Morgan (banking), Thomas Edison (electricity/light bulbs), Bill Gates (computer operating systems and applications) and others.
Some distinguish business entrepreneurs as either "political entrepreneurs" or "market entrepreneurs."
