Author Archive

A question I get asked often by marketers and others is, “What exactly is a small business?” By that, the questioner means, “What is the size that separates a small business from a big business:” Maketers want to know the answer to this question because they have in mind, an ideal audience for their particular...
Read more »

Over the past few years, the interactive part of South by Southwest, the giant music, film and technology festival held each spring in Austin, Texas, has grown into a 15,000+ attendee “spring break for geeks,” as some wags have started calling it. As I’ve been one of those “geeks” who just wrapped up my sixth...
Read more »

A new study released by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, a not-for-profit academic research consortium, finds that in almost every country worldwide, “entrepreneurship education and training is inadequate, especially in primary and secondary schools.” In surveys with more than 100,000 individuals, GEM found that 80% of entrepreneurship education and training is provided through formal...
Read more »

When things are going great and a small business owner sees the chance to learn something from a small business owner friend, there is no hesitation to reach out and ask for insight into how something works, or how to do something better. So I know small business owners have the ability to...
Read more »

Across the U.S. — indeed, around the world — universities are responding to a wave of students who want careers as entrepreneurs and small business owners. Over 110 university programs focused on such entrepreneurship, small business and family business education and training are now featured in the SmallBusiness.com University Entrepreneurship Programs Hub. Each entry...
Read more »

Each March, I* go to the gigantic gathering in Austin, Texas called South by Southwest Interactive. In the years I’ve attended, it has grown from a small conference that was held in a small corner of that city’s convention center to a sprawling mega-convention that spreads out over the entire convention center and hotels...
Read more »

Today, members of Congress are attending a health-care summit hosted by President Obama in order to see if a healthcare reform legislative package can be negotiated and passed this year. Most of the coverage leading up to the gathering has been focused on the political intrigue of the summit: “High stakes gambit” is how...
Read more »

I’ll be the first to admit, I get a little confused because there seems to be several weeks and months throughout the year that we are supposed to celebrate some official small business or entrepreneurship week or month. (In a later post and SmallBusiness.com entry, I’ll list several). I guess it’s a little...
Read more »

Elance Blog served up economic wisdom that seems to confuse some economists: If the economy is growing, dramatic increases in productivity can only cover so much of that improvement. And so, if the Labor Department keeps reporting that jobs are lost, who’s doing all that work that’s expanding the economy? Well, for one thing, labor...
Read more »

First the best news: We’ve made it much, much easier to create a User profile on SmallBusiness.com. We’ve installed a wiki “extension” that makes creating a user profile as easy as filling in the blanks and uploading your photo or logo (or, avatar, as it’s officially called). To create a User profile, simply log...
Read more »