Cooperative Adverstising

About.com has this definition of cooperative advertising:

A system by which ad costs are divided between two or more parties. Usually, such programs are offered by manufacturers to their wholesalers or retailers, as a means of encouraging those parties to advertise the product.

It doesn't say much more about it than that. And if you google it, you'll get lots of websites of companies who will take your money to help you do it. About.com gives synonyms for it: Co-op Advertising, Co-op program.

Cooperative advertising is a very cost-effective tactic for growing a business. Whether it's you and your distributor (if you have one), or two or three people in complementary lines of work going in together. For example, attorneys who are solo practitioners but who share a suite of offices, have advertised cooperatively for years. A realtor, title officer, and mortgage consultant might go together and advertise for all three. The cooperators have to be willing to cooperate, however. The egos have to be subordinated to the common good.

What do you think about this? Does this mean anything to you? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. It supplies the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Demographics

the term "Demographics", a corruption of the term "Demographic Characteristics" is pretty much poorly understood in most marketing literature. Take this from Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia:

Demographics or demographic data refers to selected population characteristics as used in government, marketing or opinion research, or the demographic profiles used in such research. Note the distinction from the term "demography" Commonly-used demographics include race, age, income, disabilities, mobility (in terms of travel time to work or number of vehicles available), educational attainment, home ownership, employment status, and even location. Distributions of values within a demographic variable, and across households, are both of interest, as well as trends over time. Demographics are frequently used in economic and marketing research.

"Demographics" comes from demography, the study of the composition of and changes in a population. Strictly speaking, there are only 3 demographic variables: birth, death, and net-migration (in-migration less out-migration). These are the only ways that populations change. Most of what is called "demographics" should be called "socioeconomic characteristics.

But, we now have this term and entrepreneurs have to think in terms of the characteristics of the users of their product. But whether you call the characteristics of people "demographic" or "socio-economic", you have to pay attention to them. Are they young, old, etc., rich or poor, healthy or infirm? I saw a note on a door in my 100-year-old father-in-law's apartment that said "Leave the paper in the bag, not on the floor." There was an arrow to a plastic bag hanging from the door knob. I wondered at first why not just pick it up. I quickly realized that the residents probably had a lot of trouble stooping. Duh.

So, is your product designed for elderly? For example, are you marketing a devise that allows elderly users to communicate with emergency services if they've fallen or otherwise are unable to get to the phone? Well, you'd better watch some of them use it so you understand how to make it better suited to people who have more constraints placed on them by their deteriorating physical condition.

What do you think about this? Does this mean anything to you? I'd like to know. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. It supplies the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Deconstruction

Deconstruction means a lot of things in a lot different context. In the context of building, it means, according to Wikipedia the free, on-line encyclopedia,

the selective dismantlement of building components, specifically for re-use, recycling, and waste management. It differs from demolition where a site is cleared of its building by the most expedient means. Deconstruction has also been defined as “construction in reverse”. The process of dismantling structures is an ancient activity that has been revived by the growing field of sustainable, green building. Buildings, like everything, have a life-cycle. Deconstruction focuses on giving the materials within a building a new life once the building as a whole can no longer continue.

Extended to a business context, Evans and Wurster define deconstruction as the process by which

everyone can exchange rich information without constraints on reach, the channel choices for marketers, the inefficiencies of consumer search, the hierarchical structure of supply chains, the organizational pyramid, asymmetries of information, and the boundaries of the corporation [are] all be called into question; the competitive advantages that depended on them [are] challenged; [and] the business structures that had been shaped by them fall apart. (Evans, Philip and Thomas S. Wurster, Blown to Bits; How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1999, p. 37)

Deconstruction is the process by which disintermediation occurs. And as there is a parallel process of reintermediation, there is also a process of reconstruction. See the part on Coase's law. It's the process by which entrepreneurial opportunities are found.

What do you think about this? Does this mean anything to you? I'd like to know. Google "deconstruction" so you can see all the different contexts in which deconstruction is used. Also, read the Evans and Wurster book. It's excellent and still good after almost 10 years. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. It supplies the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Disintermediation

On November 14, 2008, I wrote, within the context of the tradeoff between richness and reach, about the

Tremendous advantage we have as entrepreneurs in the age of disintermediation is that we no longer have to make a trade-off between richness and reach.

Wikipedia says this about disintermediation:

In economics, disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain: "cutting out the middleman". Instead of going through traditional distribution channels, which had some type of intermediate (such as a distributor, wholesaler, broker, or agent), companies may now deal with every customer directly, for example via the Internet. One important factor is a drop in the cost of servicing customers directly.

Disintermediation initiated by consumers is often the result of high market transparency, in that buyers are aware of supply prices direct from the manufacturer. Buyers bypass the middlemen (wholesalers and retailers) in order to buy directly from the manufacturer and thereby pay less. Buyers can alternatively elect to purchase from wholesalers. Often, a B2C company functions as the bridge between buyer and manufacturer.

Read the whole article and read the Evans and Wurstner book I referred to in my November 14 posting.

Disintermediation has been afoot now for some time. It's caused short-term dislocation but long-term opportunity for others. I think some industries have been disintermediated when they shouldn't have been, and other industries have benefited from it. Some industries will reintermediate, and both things will be going on for some time.

What do you think about this? Do you use email marketing? I'd like to know. Also Google it. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. It supplies the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Electronic Business

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia says:

Electronic Business, commonly referred to as "eBusiness" or "e-Business", may be defined as the utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT) in support of all the activities of business. Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and services between businesses, groups and individuals and hence can be seen as one of the essential activities of any business. Hence, electronic commerce or eCommerce focuses on the use of ICT to enable the external activities and relationships of the business with individuals, groups and other businesses.

Louis Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, in his book, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? attributes the term "e-Business" to IBM's marketing and Internet teams in 1996.

Electronic business methods enable companies to link their internal and external data processing systems more efficiently and flexibly, to work more closely with suppliers and partners, and to better satisfy the needs and expectations of their customers.

In practice, e-business is more than just e-commerce. While e-business refers to more strategic focus with an emphasis on the functions that occur using electronic capabilities, e-commerce is a subset of an overall e-business strategy. E-commerce seeks to add revenue streams using the World Wide Web or the Internet to build and enhance relationships with clients and partners and to improve efficiency using the Empty Vessel strategy. Often, e-commerce involves the application of knowledge management systems.

E-business involves business processes spanning the entire value chain: electronic purchasing and supply chain management, processing orders electronically, handling customer service, and cooperating with business partners. Special technical standards for e-business facilitate the exchange of data between companies. E-business software solutions allow the integration of intra and inter firm business processes. E-business can be conducted using the Web, the Internet, intranets, extranets, or some combination of these.

Read the entire Wikipedia article.

This seems in some ways a little dated now. With all the attention given to website marketing and internet marketing and promotion, that every business worth being called a business has a website and is therefore an ebusiness. I've known some entrepreneurs who spurn the internet. They say, "I just don't want to be that dependent on a computer." The thing is, it's the computer that shall set you free. I think now more than ever before the risk to an ebusiness is to have too much demand too soon. These people aren't really sincere about business anyway. They're basically hobbyists.

What do you think about this? I'd like to know. Also Google it. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Empathy

Entrepreneurs are helped if they exhibit empathy. From Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, we learn that

Empathy is the capacity to recognize or understand an other's state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into an other's shoes", or in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself. Empathy does not necessarily imply compassion, or empathic concern because this capacity can be present in context of compassionate or cruel behavior.

People are generally born with empathy, however, it is a skill that can be developed, as the Wikipedia article goes on to say.

For an entrepreneur to have a successful business it's important that they be able to see their enterprise and themselves from the perspective of another. If the entrepreneur is to understand what their product means to people, how they use it, and what role it does and could play in their lives, it's important but not mandatory that the entrepreneur empathize with their customers. There's an old Joe South song, "Walk a Mile in My Shoes", from the 60s in which the singer encourages listeners to walk in their shoes so they can understand the feelings of another.

Star Trek fans remember that Spock actually melded his mind with Bones, his rival, to save his mind because he knew he was going to die in the radiation chamber. The good of the many supersedes the good of the one, he always said. That practice had some pretty nasty and unpredictable consequences. It's an extreme form of empathy. But it's metaphorically correct. And Deanna Troia, from Next Generation had a strong sense of empathy and was called an "empath."

What do you think about this? Do you have empathy? I'd like to know. Read the Wikipedia article and the references cited there. Also Google it. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Salience

From Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, we find this:

Salience refers to the relative importance or prominence of a piece of a sign. The relative salience of a particular sign when considered in the context of others helps an individual to quickly rank large amounts of information by importance and thus give attention to that which is the most important. This process stops an individual from becoming mentally overloaded with data.

What is meant by a "sign" is a "tag," a label that represents the thing that's tagged. Price is a common tag. Quality is another one. Color, and so on. People, things, and ideas have tags on them put their either consciously by a person or collectively by all those who are aware of that person, thing, or idea. Sometimes we don't even realize the tags we wear. They're like food we spill on ourselves without realizing it until somebody tells us we have food on our shirt.

In an entrepreneurial context, salience refers to what users or customers of a given product or service think is important. Salience can vary from low to high. If price is very important, that is an object has high salience, your product or service better cost about the same as competing products or services. If you charge more, you have to make sure customers are getting something when they buy yours than customers are getting when they buy the other person's.

What do you think about this? I'd like to know. Read the Wikipedia article and the references cited there. Also Google it. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Serendipity

Serendipity is an extremely important concept for entrepreneurs. Wikipedia says:

Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. The word has been voted as one of the ten English words that were hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. However, due to its sociological use, the word has been imported into many other languages (Portuguese serendipicidade or serendipidade; French sérendipicité or sérendipité but also heureux hasard, "fortunate chance"; Italian serendipità; Dutch serendipiteit; German Serendipität; Swedish, Danish and Norwegian serendipitet; Romanian serendipitate).

In fact I found this article while I was looking for something else. There was even a mildly-interesting movie, titled "Serendipity", with John Kusack.

That "accidents will happen" is beside the point. Entrepreneurs have to be curious enough and open enough to new ideas and suggestions such that they position themselves to appreciate an opportunity when it falls into their lap. My first father-in-law, who was an avid and pretty good bridge player, often said, "You have to allow your opponents to make a mistake." It's like that with serendipity. You have to good things to happen.

What do you think about this? Read the Wikipedia article and the references cited there. Also Google it. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Signal-to-Noise Ratio

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, says:

Signal-to-noise ratio (often abbreviated SNR or S/N) is an electrical engineering measurement, also used in other fields (such as scientific measurements, biological cell signaling), defined as the ratio of a signal power to the noise power corrupting the signal. In less technical terms, signal-to-noise ratio compares the level of a desired signal (such as music) to the level of background noise. The higher the ratio, the less obtrusive the background noise is.

Now it's not a difficult stretch to take this to entrepreneurship.

A successful entrepreneur weaves an authentic narrative about him or herself and their enterprises. That narrative gets embodied in a message which the entreprtheir hopes people will hear and be compelled by. The message is the signal.

When the message gets out there it has to compete with ~3,000 other messages daily for the public's eyeballs and earwax. The other messages, they comprise the noise. It's like static on the radio.

Consumers have filters to cut through all the noise and absorb the messages they want to hear. S/N or SNR measures the extent to which an individual message does that. One message out there has a SNR = 1/3000. Anything the entrepreneur can do to enhance the chances that the eyeballs and earballs will hear that 1 message.

Better get going.

What do you think about this? Read the Wikipedia article and the references cited there. Also Google it. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Supply Chain

From Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia:

A supply chain or logistics network is the system of organizations, people, technology, activities, information and resources involved in moving a product or service from supplier to customer. Supply chain activities transform natural resources, raw materials and components into a finished product that is delivered to the end customer. In sophisticated supply chain systems, used products may re-enter the supply chain at any point where residual value is recyclable. Supply chains link value chains.

Entrepreneurs have to pay attention to their supply chains. It's the way they have a business. It helps them compete against other entrepreneurs. There's even a verb now, "supplychaining" which means using your supply chain to create competitive advantage.

Actually, this isn't new. Industry has been using "just in time" supply to make sure that supplies reach the assembly just before they are needed. This keeps production moving smoothly and material doesn't sit around too long deteriorating or risking some even that would damage it and reducing costs of production.

What do you think about this? Read the Wikipedia article and the references cited there. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Sustainability

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia describes sustainability as:

The capacity to maintain a certain process or state indefinitely.

All inhabitants of the earth should be concerned with achieving a sustainable level of living. If it's not sustainable, you die. You should read the whole Wikipedia article and follow its reference and links.

Entrepreneurs need to know more specifically about the sustainability of their current level of business operations.

Answers.com defines economic sustainability as the "Noninflationary, stable growth in the economy with full employment: an objective of Federal Reserve Monetary Policy."

At the level of your enterprise, Answers.com sustainability is the

Income from a firm's operations in future accounting periods that can support debt repayment. It implies a rate of growth expected from retained earnings without external financing, and without altering financial leverage. Lenders usually ask for copies of financial statements before extending or renewing a Line of Credit.

Investopedia.com gives the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) as Return on Equity (ROE) x (1-dividend-payout ratio).

Morningstar.com gives a lot more on SGR. It says that there's a lot that SGR doesn't tell you. For example, "it won't tell you whether a company has the opportunity to grow. If the market for the goods isn't there, it doesn't matter how high a company's sustainable growth rate is--the compnay won't grow."

Whether you believe in formulas or want to crank them out or not, you need to think about what it will take to sustain your business and even make it thrive. If you don't think it will the way it's going, you need to figure out what will sustain it and make it thrive. If you can't come up with options, maybe you need to think about doing something else.

What's your notion of sustainability? Read all these things and google sustainability for more. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Synergy

Synergy is something every entrepreneur should crave. Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, says

Synergy (from the Greek syn-ergo, συνεργός meaning working together) is the term used to describe a situation where the final outcome of a system is greater than the sum of its parts.

When you and someone else have a synergistic relationship, you're partnership produces more then double what either one of you could have done on your own. What could be better than that?

You should read the whole Wikipedia article--it's a good one. And post a comment. Have you ever experienced synergy?

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Trade secret

A trade secret is a form of intellectual property. If you have a business that depends on a special product or formula for success that would undermine the viability of your business if it were copied, than you have to worry about trade secrets.

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia says:

A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers. In some jurisdictions, such secrets are referred to as "confidential information" or "classified information".

Classified information is to the military what its formula is to Coca Cola. Read the whole Wikipedia article and follow its links.

Trade secrets are tricky to protect. You want enough information about what you're doing out there so people will buy it, but you don't want the actual trade secret known because others could copy it and beat you out. And, how do you protect yourself against an employee gaining access to it and harming you?

My own opinion: the concern over trade secrets being known is "mis-overhyped." The secret of all business is in the implementation. You can protect yourself by requiring all employs to not share information about their work outside the company. You can better protect yourself by being the best company doing what you're doing so that others won't be able to out-compete you no matter what they know about you.

You should read the whole Wikipedia article. And Post a comment. And read the whole Wikipedia article. It's a good one.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Equity Partner

As Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyplodedia, says: "An equity partner is a partner in a partnership who is a part owner of the business, and is entitled to a proportion of the distributable profits of the partnership."

Many people come to me at SCORE and say they want to get money to start a business. Well, that's the last thing you should be looking at, but okay the best way to get the capital is to generate it internally. Start-us seldom have that luxury. They need capital from somewhere, and being undercapitalized is the most common reason for business failure. The best way to get capital is to have an equity partner. If you just borrow it, you have the money. If you have a person working in your business, you have help.

Wikipedia goes on to say: "The degree of control which each...partner exerts over the partnership depends upon the relevant partnership agreement."

You should read the whole Wikipedia article. And Post a comment. And read the whole Wikipedia article. It's a good one.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

GIGO (Garbage in, Garbage out)

Entrepreneurs should know that if they work from faulty information they get faulty analysis.

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, says:

Garbage In, Garbage Out (abbreviated to GIGO) is a phrase in the field of computer science or ICT. It is used primarily to call attention to the fact that computers will unquestioningly process the most nonsensical of input data and produce nonsensical output, and is a pun on FIFO (First In, First Out). It was most popular in the early days of computing, but applies even more today, when powerful computers can spew out mountains of erroneous information in a short time.

The actual term "Garbage in, Garbage out", coined as a teaching mantra by George Fuechsel, an IBM 305 RAMAC technician/instructor in New York, soon contracted to the acronym GIGO. Early programmers were required to test virtually each program step and cautioned not to expect that the resulting program would "do the right thing" when given imperfect input. The underlying principle was probably cited by Charles Babbage, inventor of the first programmable device, who said:

On two occasions I have been asked,—"Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" [...] I am not able rightly to comprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question

It is also commonly used to describe failures in human decision making due to faulty, incomplete, or imprecise data. For example, a poorly typeset TeX document will look bad because the user did not write the TeX source well.

The term can also be used as an explanation for the poor quality of a digitized audio or video file. Although digitizing can be the first step in cleaning up a signal, it does not, by itself, improve the quality. Defects in the original analog signal will be faithfully recorded, but may be identified and removed by a subsequent step. (See Digital signal processing.)

Garbage In, Gospel Out is a more recent expansion of the acronym. It is a sardonic comment on the tendency to put excessive trust in 'computerized' data, and on the propensity for individuals to blindly accept what the computer says. Because the data goes through the computer, we tend to believe it.

Decision-makers increasingly face computer-generated information and analyses that could be collected and analyzed in no other way. Precisely for that reason, going behind that output is out of the question, even if one has good cause to be suspicious. In short, the computer analysis becomes the gospel.

More than this, though, entrepreneurs work with non-computerized faulty data all the time, too. In fact no data set, computer- or human-generated, is perfect. It's either out of date (rapidly in today's economy), the biases inherant in it isn't known because the creators of the data either did not know what the biases were or were not careful to state them, or the data are non-specific to your needs.

Creating your own data isn't a good solution, at least initially, because it's expensive and by the time the results are in, they're out of date. So, you have to triangulate and assign an error factor to the information you do use. Also you have to establish a plan with benchmarks and monitor your progress at every step of the way so that if things seem to go astray, you can make corrections in time.

More than that you can't overstate what you know and you have to figure out just what you don't know and how something arising from what you don't know can rise up and bite you and what the probably intended and unintended consequences (usually 2x to 3x the estimated intended consequences) will likely be. Out of such monitoring come the awareness of other entrepreneurial opportunities.

Does this make sense? Post a comment. And read the whole Wikipedia article. It's a good one.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Takeover

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia says:

In business, a takeover is the purchase of one company (the target) by another (the acquirer, or bidder). In the UK, the term refers to the acquisition of a public company whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, in contrast to the acquisition of a private company.

You may agree to give up a controlling share of your business in exchange for a large amount of capital from a funder. If so, you can find yourself out on your ear if the funder who bankrolled you decides he or she doesn't like what you're doing. He or she can take over your enterpreise, bring in their own management team, and basically fire the entrepreneur who took the initial risk and had the idea for the business in the first place.

You may not find this a problem to give up control of your business (After all, 20% of anything is more than 100% of nothing.). But tread carefully. Still, to many entrepreneurs, their businesses are their children and they would no sooner give up control than allow someone to take their kids away from them.

If this happens to you and you can come away with a big settlement, put it behind you and go have another child.

what do you think of this? What are your ideas? I'd like to know. Read the articles cited and their references. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship 2.0 is my entrepreneurship course. The ideas in it supply the life's blood of my professional activities: teaching, writing, and real estate. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Surface Area

In math, according to Wikipedia, the on-line, encyclopedia:

Surface area is the how much exposed area an object has. It is expressed in square units. If an object has flat faces, its surface area can be calculated by adding together the areas of its faces. Even objects with smooth surfaces, such as spheres, have surface area.

A business has a surface too: that interface between the people "inside" the business and those "outside" the business. The size of a business's surface is roughly equal to the number of connections the business has.

I think of the surface area of a business kind of like the exterior of a balled up porcupine. Each connection of the business can be considered a small sphere tied to the business by spine with a thin membrane drwawn tightly around the balls.

It used to be that businesses tried to limit their surface area, that is have only the president, and selected others communicate with the wider world. Well, the genie is out of the bottle. The horses have left the barn. Web 2.0 has blown everything apart. Businesses have a greater surface area than ever before.

Businesses that embrace this new reality and use it to their benefit will succeed over the long haul. Those that try to try to strike back will not. Of course each of those connections has a surface area, represented by a membrane fitted over their connections, and so forth. It gets pretty complicated and impossible to visualize after a very short while.

what do you think of this? What are your ideas? I'd like to know. Read the articles cited and their references. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my real estate practice and my writing. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Triangulation

Entrepreneurs need to know about triangulation because they often need to estimate market size for their improved mousetrap when there are no hard and fast estimates on which they can hang their hats. Triangulation allows you to pull data from a variety of sources to come at a range within which will probably fall the desired estimate.

In trigonometry and geometry, as noted in Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia,

Triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by measuring angles to it from known points at either end of a fixed baseline, rather than measuring distances to the point directly. The point can then be fixed as the third point of a triangle with one known side and two known angles.

In health policy, according to www.igh.org/triangulation,

Triangulation is an approach to data analysis that synthesizes data from multiple sources. Triangulation seeks to quickly examine existing data to strengthen interpretations and improve policy and programs based on the available evidence. By examining information collected by different methods, by different groups and in different populations, findings can be corroborated across data sets, reducing the impact of potential biases that can exist in a single study.

Triangulation combines information from quantitative and qualitative studies, incorporates prevention and care program data, and makes use of expert judgment. Triangulation can answer questions on risk groups, program effectiveness, policy and budget planning, and the state of the epidemic in a changing environment. Triangulation methodology provides a powerful tool when a rapid response is needed, or when good data do not exist to answer a specific question. Triangulation can be used when the collection of new data is not feasible or cost-effective.

Triangulation can be very useful in coming to educated guesses about something. Even if you think you know the size of a given variable you're interested in, triangulation can either increase the chances that you are correct or look at the question before you jump to fast.

Do you know about triangulation? What are your ideas? I'd like to know. Read the articles cited and their references. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my real estate practice and my writing. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Tactics

According to Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia:

A tactic is a conceptual action. In military usage, a military tactic is used by a military unit of no larger than a division to implement a specific mission and achieve a specific objective, or to advance toward a specific goal. A tactic is implemented as one or more tasks.

Tactics are what you're going to do to carry out your strategy to accomplish your goals.

An example of a tactic is: if you're a real estate broker, buying a small, local agency in order to facilitate your access into a new part of the city. Or, purchasing a patent from an inventor to keep the invention from falling into the hands of a competitor. Another example is, if you're a local business, organizing a community protest to keep a competitor out of your neighborhood.

You don't have to know the dictionary definitions of these things or agree with me as to what a tactic is, but you have to know what you mean by them in the context of your business so you can do what you need to do. You need to have your goals, objectives, stragegies, and tactics well laid out.

What do you think of this? What are your ideas? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my real estate practice and my writing. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Strategy

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, says: "Strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal." You should read the entire Wikipedia article and its links and references. It has a long book list on strategy which will keep you busy for a long, long time.

Strategy is important for the entrepreneur in order to frame the ideas for his business or her business. Good strategic thinking is key for developing an agenda for success. Sound strategy is important for success.

What do you think of this? What are your ideas? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my real estate practice and my writing. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Objectives

Many sources lump "goals" and "objectives." Wikipedia, for example, says: "An Objective is a goal, a planned or intended outcome."

I do not.

I define a goal as an intended outcome. An objective is a goal with a date. When you say, "I want to be rich," you are stating a goal, and intention. When you say, "I want to be earning $6.5 million per year by January 1, 2020," you are articulating an objective.

A goal is generally broader then an objective and is a very endpoint. For example my goal in life is to be sitting on the Shilthorn, a very beautiful Alp in central Switzerland, writing the great American novel. My objective related to this goal is to be earning $200,000 per year from my books by 2015.

Whether you agree with my definition or not, it's important that you define what you're talking about. Entrepreneurs need goals, something to shoot for, and they need a deadline so they know if they've accomplished what they they set out long ago. And if not, what they need to do to get themselves on track. Maybe the goal was unrealistic. Maybe the approach you used was not productive. Whatever. And it's important to write things down so you own them and can look back and measure your progress or lack thereof.

What do you think of this? What are your ideas? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my real estate practice and my writing. For entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot/com.

Goal

There is a lot of confusion about what a goal is. Some observers equate it to an objective.

Take this Wikipedia article for example:

A goal or objective consists of a projected state of affairs which a person or a system plans or intends to achieve or bring about — a personal or organizational desired end-point in some sort of assumed development.

People also talk about objectives, strategy, tatics, intentions, aims, ends, and so forth.

I agree with the Wikipedia article except on equating it with an objective. We're going to sort it all out in the next few blog postings.

Goals are key to entrepreneurs. If an entrepreneur doesn't have a goal, he or she doesn't have anything to shoot for. As was said in Alice in Wonderland, roughly paraphased, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." In fact, you should go read Alice in Wonderland before reading Wikipedia.

What do you think about goals and objectives? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all my professional actitivities. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of my real estate practice and my writing. For entrepreneurial ideas on real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on entrepreneurial writing and publishing, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com.

Interaction Design

Wikipedia say,

Interaction Design (IxD) is the discipline of defining the behavior of products and systems that a user can interact with. The practice typically centers around complex technology systems such as software, mobile devices, and other electronic devices. However, it can also apply to other types of products and services, and even organizations themselves. Interaction design defines the behavior (the "interaction") of an artifact or system in response to its users.

Certain basic principles of cognitive psychology provide grounding for interaction design. These include mental models, mapping, interface metaphors, and affordances. Many of these are laid out in Donald Norman's influential book The Design of Everyday Things. Academic research in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) includes methods for describing and testing the usability of interacting with an interface, such as cognitive dimensions and the cognitive walkthrough.

Interaction designers are typically informed through iterative cycles of user research. They design with an emphasis on user goals and experience, and evaluate designs in terms of usability and affective influence.

The importance for entrepreneurs should be clear. We have to design our products such that the unser can have input into product design and we can continually upgrade our products to make them more relevant to users' needs, and more in line with what they're looking for.

What do you think about this? I'd like to know. If you're interested, read the entire Wikipedia article and follow it's links. And post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas such as this are their life's blood. For entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.

Interaction

In common speech we use "interaction" in a bunch of different contexts: "social interaction," "group interaction," "genetic interaction," and so forth.

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia defines it this way:

Interaction is a kind of action that occurs as two or more objects have an effect upon one another. The idea of a two-way effect is essential in the concept of interaction, as opposed to a one-way causal effect...Interaction has different tailored meanings in various sciences. All systems are related and interdependent. Every action has a consequence.

This isn't exactly what we mean by interaction in an entrepreneurial context. Rather, Statistics.com has it closer to our usage of it:

An interaction effect refers to the role of a variable in an estimated model, and its effect on the dependent variable. A variable that has an interaction effect will have a different effect on the dependent variable, depending on the level of some third variable. For example, increasing doses of a hypertension drug might yield increasing reductions in blood pressure, but the benefit with progressively larger doses might be progressively greater for smokers than for non-smokers.

Interaction effects are quite common in life, and entrepreneurs have to think about them on a number of different levels. Their product might, when combined with another, produce a bigger profit. There may be two things going on in their businesses that, by themselves, produce no effect, but when they interact, have big effects. They might be reading a study about something important to their business that talks about interaction effects.

Are you interested in this? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com

Interactivity

A key component of any entrepreneurial activity is communication. If an entrepreneur is going to get his or her message, tell their story to the world, and motivate others to come along with him or her, information is key. Entrepreneurs don't have to become information theorists, but they do have to understand something about communication theory to be able to think entrepreneurially.

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, says:

In the fields of information science, communication, and industrial design, there is debate over the meaning of Interactivity. In the "contingency view" of interactivity, there are three levels: Noninteractive, when a message is not related to previous messages; Reactive, when a message is related only to one immediately previous message; and Interactive, when a message is related to a number of previous messages and to the relationship between them.

Interactivity is similar to the degree of responsiveness, and is examined as a communication process in which each message is related to the previous messages exchanged, and to the relation of those messages to the messages preceding them.

If you're interested in communication and information theory, read the Wikipedia article and its references.

What do you think about this? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship informs all my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are the life's blood of those activities. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.hatman.com

Invention

Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia says:

An invention is the discovery or creation of a new configuration, composition of matter, device, or process. Some inventions are based on pre-existing models or ideas. Other inventions are radical breakthroughs which may extend the boundaries of human knowledge or experience.

Inventions that get out into the world are innovations, and may be a major breakthroughs or of minor and incremental impact. The effects can also be inbetween these two extremes.

An invention that is novel and not obvious to those who are skilled in the same field may be able to obtain the legal protection of a patent. There is also a cultural invention which is an innovative set of useful social behaviors adopted by people who then passed on to others.

Inventors are not necessarily entrepreneurs. Often they make lousy business leaders because their skill-set does not include entrepreneurial skills. Just about everything we use now was invented by somebody, everything from cars to computer chips. In fact the history of the world could be written as the history of innovation.

Entrepreneurs have to be aware of what's being invented and see how they can use inventions to make a difference in the world.

Are you an inventor? Know one? Let me know by posting a comment.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of all my professional activities. For entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for entrepreneurial writing and publishing, to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com

Inventor's Notebook

From Wikipedia:

An inventor's notebook is used by inventors, scientists and engineers to record their ideas, invention process, experimental tests and results and observations. It is not a legal document but is valuable, if properly organized and maintained, since it can help establish dates of conception and reduction to practice. The information can improve the outcome of a patent or a patent contestation.

This is a good idea for entrepreneurs as well. Document your ownership of your ideas by writing them down, recording what you are thinking, why you are thinking it, and when you first though of it as well as how and when you develop it. It will also help you understand the development of your own thinking.

The Wikipedia article gives some good guildelines for your journal. If you google "inventor's notebook" you will come across some pre-made templates you can just buy or adapt to your use.

What do you think about this? Come post a comment. I'd like to know.

Entrepreneurship informs all my professional activities. It's the life's blood of my writing and real estate practice. For entrepreneurial real estate, go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for writing, www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com

Inventor

Here's the way Wikipedia, the free, on-line encyclopedia, defines an invention:

In patent law, an inventor is the person, or persons in United States patent law, who contribute to the claims of a patentable invention. In some patent law frameworks however, such as in the European Patent Convention (EPC) and its case law, no explicit, accurate definition of who exactly is an inventor is provided. The definition may slightly vary from one European country to another. Inventorship is generally not considered to be a patentability criterion under European patent law.

Under U.S. case law, an inventor is the one with "intellectual domination" over the inventive process, and not merely one who assists in its reduction to practice. Since inventorship relates to the claims in a patent application, knowing who an inventor is under the patent law is sometimes difficult.

"Joint inventors", or "co-inventors", exist when a patentable invention is the result of inventive work of more than one inventor. Joint inventors exist even where one inventor contributed a majority of the work.

Absent a contract or license, the inventors are individuals who own the rights in an issued patent. Status as an inventor dramatically alters parties' ability to capitalize on the invention.

A profitable route for an inventor with a nimble mind who can produce lots of patentable things is to get a patent on an idea and hold it until someone buys him or her out. That works well for purchasers because (1) They acquire an already-patented good; 2) They can save on the time required to make said item; (3) If they're trying to attract venture capital they're that much more attractive; and (4) If they're in a related market, by buying the patent they can fence competitors out. If you're an entrepreneur you need to know about intentions and patents.

What do you think about this? I'd like to know. Post a comment.

Entrepreneurship is the life's blood of my professional teaching, real estate, and writing practices. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.your stopforrealestate.com and for entrepreneurial writing to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com