The National Commission on Entrepreneurship has published a report on Entrepreneurship and American Economic Growth. The report is available as a PDF here:
http://www.zeromillion.com/files/embracing-innovation.pdf
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Does it pay to be green?
In manufacturing terms, exponential population growth means more factories taking up more land, using more raw materials, and allowing more emissions and waste into the environment. Demand for products and services will grow, but the availability of supplies isn’t guaranteed. Competition for Earth’s finite resources will heat up and it’s easy, yet unsettling, to imagine the socio-economic and political consequences.
A variable-speed drive saves energy that the La Union sugar mill in Guatemala is able to sell for additional revenue of $158,480 per harvest season. Source: Rockwell
A variable-speed drive saves energy that the La Union sugar mill in Guatemala is able to sell for additional revenue of $158,480 per harvest season. Source: Rockwell
“To achieve and maintain world-class sustainable manufacturing, you need continuous improvement – not just of your capital assets but the utilization and return on your raw materials, utilities and human resource assets as well,” says John Blanchard, principal analyst for CPG industries at ARC Advisory Group. “Manufacturing companies should recognize that it will become increasingly difficult for manufacturing operations to drive new growth and margin without considering manufacturing ‘sustainability’ in their business decisions.”
The benefits are practical as well as financial. Blanchard explains, “Maximizing the utilization of assets always brings a return on investment. If you can bring a packaging line from 50% efficiency to 80% efficiency without buying new equipment or using more energy, then you have reduced the cost per unit of product and demonstrated one of many approaches toward achieving world-class sustainable manufacturing.”
AEVIA Reveals the Source
A variable-speed drive saves energy that the La Union sugar mill in Guatemala is able to sell for additional revenue of $158,480 per harvest season. Source: Rockwell
A variable-speed drive saves energy that the La Union sugar mill in Guatemala is able to sell for additional revenue of $158,480 per harvest season. Source: Rockwell
“To achieve and maintain world-class sustainable manufacturing, you need continuous improvement – not just of your capital assets but the utilization and return on your raw materials, utilities and human resource assets as well,” says John Blanchard, principal analyst for CPG industries at ARC Advisory Group. “Manufacturing companies should recognize that it will become increasingly difficult for manufacturing operations to drive new growth and margin without considering manufacturing ‘sustainability’ in their business decisions.”
The benefits are practical as well as financial. Blanchard explains, “Maximizing the utilization of assets always brings a return on investment. If you can bring a packaging line from 50% efficiency to 80% efficiency without buying new equipment or using more energy, then you have reduced the cost per unit of product and demonstrated one of many approaches toward achieving world-class sustainable manufacturing.”
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Friday, August 3, 2007
The Entrepreneur: Bringing Innovation to Life
As the global economy continues to evolve, scientific discovery, technological invention and commercial innovation are fast becoming the hallmarks of our socioeconomic well-being. Although, transforming science into technology can be fraught with intimidating doses of hard work and hard thinking, the hard truth of the matter is that bringing technology to the marketplace is just as essential to wringing out social benefits from science and technology as the discoveries and inventions were in the first place. However, in contrast to the advanced knowledge it takes to develop new products, it takes age-old personality traits such as vision, leadership, self-confidence and intestinal fortitude to bring bright ideas to the light of day. Those among us who do the things that bring the benefits of technology to people are that separate breed of individuals we call entrepreneurs.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Yo Governments! Here's How Not to Blow It
A wholesale open-access license for a major chunk of the 700 MHz band would dramatically expand the number of competitors offering mobile voice and Internet access. This would be a huge public policy breakthrough for American broadband. Like the Internet, wireless would have a sandbox for innovation. Small entrepreneurs with novel ideas could bring products to market and get direct consumer feedback. No more groveling to the marketing departments of the cellular carriers for an opening. If you have a good idea, build it. "Let the market decide" would mean let consumers, not some telco executive, decide.
Four Principles
To achieve this vision of a healthy, competitive wireless industry, open access must include four basic principles: open devices, open services, open applications, and—crucially—open networks. We must open a portion of the 700 MHz band to a wholesale operator with the incentive to sell affordable access to this valuable spectrum to all third-party service providers.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Four Principles
To achieve this vision of a healthy, competitive wireless industry, open access must include four basic principles: open devices, open services, open applications, and—crucially—open networks. We must open a portion of the 700 MHz band to a wholesale operator with the incentive to sell affordable access to this valuable spectrum to all third-party service providers.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Entrepreneurs Getting Younger
They’d rather strike out on their own. In fact, nearly 71 percent of the 1,474 youth who participated in a 2006 Junior Achievement survey said they wanted to be self-employed sometime in their lives—up by 6.9 percentage points since 2004. Credit the opportunities that come from growing up in a technological society, experts said. That’s not to say there haven’t been downtrends throughout the years.
Reasons for the trend: About 3.9 percent of adults ages 20-34 started a business in 2005 and 2006, according to the Missouri-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s 2006 Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, up slightly from the 3.7 percent who took the plunge in 2000-2001—but down from 4.3 percent in 1996-1997.
Not many other national studies track the age of entrepreneurs, but experts agree that an increasing number of startups have young people at the helm.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Reasons for the trend: About 3.9 percent of adults ages 20-34 started a business in 2005 and 2006, according to the Missouri-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s 2006 Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, up slightly from the 3.7 percent who took the plunge in 2000-2001—but down from 4.3 percent in 1996-1997.
Not many other national studies track the age of entrepreneurs, but experts agree that an increasing number of startups have young people at the helm.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Entrepreneurship Education
Schools are adding more courses and other activities to cultivate the business ideas of budding workers who are increasingly bypassing corporate jobs for their own startups.
The move to embrace this academic discipline comes as today's college students see the business world differently than past generations. With unprecedented access to technology, students can start a business with much less capital and manpower than ever before. And after watching their parents lose jobs, pensions and other benefits over the years, many students see going out on their own as offering better opportunities and flexibility - despite the risks.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
The move to embrace this academic discipline comes as today's college students see the business world differently than past generations. With unprecedented access to technology, students can start a business with much less capital and manpower than ever before. And after watching their parents lose jobs, pensions and other benefits over the years, many students see going out on their own as offering better opportunities and flexibility - despite the risks.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
The Boomer Factor
Media reports on boomers' march into their senior years carry a consistent theme: “Guess what, they don't know they're old.” Entrepreneur Magazine cites a survey from the Boomer Project (www.boomerproject.com) that found that the average 54-year-old considered himself 41. Further testing showed a psychological age of 39. Rather than believe our years are advancing, we boomers simply redefine: 60 is the new 30.
Boomers are changing old age. It's what we do. The baby boom generation—those born during the post–World War II years 1946 through 1964—has a track record of rebellion that has caused startling cultural and social transformations, including rock'n'roll, the peace movement, civil rights, and agendas we can be less proud of. Consider “Greed is good,” a phrase that caught hold when boomers entered their peak earning years.
A Merrill Lynch survey reveals that most boomers envision working throughout retirement. It adds a new wrinkle to retirement planning, which may be more aptly described as “Next Career Planning.” Merrill Lynch's research identifies the new retirement as “cyclical”—a blend of work that can take boomers in and out of new careers balanced with free time, continued learning, volunteerism, and travel.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Boomers are changing old age. It's what we do. The baby boom generation—those born during the post–World War II years 1946 through 1964—has a track record of rebellion that has caused startling cultural and social transformations, including rock'n'roll, the peace movement, civil rights, and agendas we can be less proud of. Consider “Greed is good,” a phrase that caught hold when boomers entered their peak earning years.
A Merrill Lynch survey reveals that most boomers envision working throughout retirement. It adds a new wrinkle to retirement planning, which may be more aptly described as “Next Career Planning.” Merrill Lynch's research identifies the new retirement as “cyclical”—a blend of work that can take boomers in and out of new careers balanced with free time, continued learning, volunteerism, and travel.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
The Wider Focus of Microfinance
The strategy gained prominence last year when Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist and banker who pioneered the global microfinance movement, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Grameen Bank, which Yunus founded in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the mid 1970s, offers lines of credit as low as $9 for beggars to buy bread, candy, toys and other goods to sell on the street. It has also broken social taboos by offering small-business loans to women in Muslim countries to buy cell phones, sewing machines, and weaving materials. Today, the bank provides loans to nearly 7 million people -- 97 percent of whom are women -- with some 2,226 local branches throughout the country. It claims a 98 percent repayment rate.
"By defining 'entrepreneur' in a broader way we can change the character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market," Yunus said at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in December.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Grameen Bank, which Yunus founded in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in the mid 1970s, offers lines of credit as low as $9 for beggars to buy bread, candy, toys and other goods to sell on the street. It has also broken social taboos by offering small-business loans to women in Muslim countries to buy cell phones, sewing machines, and weaving materials. Today, the bank provides loans to nearly 7 million people -- 97 percent of whom are women -- with some 2,226 local branches throughout the country. It claims a 98 percent repayment rate.
"By defining 'entrepreneur' in a broader way we can change the character of capitalism radically, and solve many of the unresolved social and economic problems within the scope of the free market," Yunus said at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in December.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
Seeing Beyond Irrational Exuberance
You know who these "entrepreneurs" are. These are the snake oil salesman. The guys who talk a good game and can convince everyone from venture capitalists to the press to the general public that they are the biggest, coolest, most important new thing out there. So what if their product doesn't do anything or has no way to actually make money or is a bad version of another product that's already out there. These players are so good at marketing themselves and their products that they are able to generate irrational exuberance.
But these guys are really just a bunch of hot air. And you know what happens to bubbles when they get too full of hot air. Pop. And so the bubble bursts, taking down the shameful hucksters who caused the burst (though also typically taking down a few legitimate companies that deserved better).
But the bubble isn't always a bad thing. For the technologies involved it can be a cleansing experience. With all the hype and hot air removed, the technology can settle down to doing its intended job. After all, despite the damage of the .com bust, eCommerce is doing just fine. So keep an eye on your bubble cycles and know when to avoid the hot air. And remember, somewhere out there right now is a technology-savvy and marketing weak inventor who is starting the first puffs for a whole new technology bubble.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
But these guys are really just a bunch of hot air. And you know what happens to bubbles when they get too full of hot air. Pop. And so the bubble bursts, taking down the shameful hucksters who caused the burst (though also typically taking down a few legitimate companies that deserved better).
But the bubble isn't always a bad thing. For the technologies involved it can be a cleansing experience. With all the hype and hot air removed, the technology can settle down to doing its intended job. After all, despite the damage of the .com bust, eCommerce is doing just fine. So keep an eye on your bubble cycles and know when to avoid the hot air. And remember, somewhere out there right now is a technology-savvy and marketing weak inventor who is starting the first puffs for a whole new technology bubble.
AEVIA Reveals the Source
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