02 July, 2012

Entrepreneurial Informations

International Consortium for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research (ICIER) 









ICIER-IIMB International Conference on Entrepreneurship Education and Training: Design, Delivery and Effectiveness during 29-31 January 2015
Please click the slide show which is displayed on the right side
How To Create A 'Killer App': A Guide For Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs in mobile ecosystems are learning how to create killer applications that can disrupt resource rich, entrenched players 

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The Secret Sauce of Successful Entrepreneurs? It’s all  in their Head.
As Stanford Psychology Professor and renowned author Carol Dweck writes in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, a person's mindset is the better predictor of success.

What Does WhatsApp's Win Mean For the Future of Texting
With Facebook forking out $19 billion for WhatsApp, could 2014 be the year when most of us give up on texting and use instant messaging instead?
Read more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/231708#ixzz2uLIKSRkT

Which Start-Up Could Be the Next Big Thing?
When it comes to technology start-ups, there are a lot of paths to success.

Where Start-ups Are Matters More Than What They Pay

Whether you’re looking to lure the most customers or attract the best employees, where you set up shop is a critical decision that should not be based solely on the cheapest lease available.
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Six Whopping Lies Told About Entrepreneurs … Sometimes By Entrepreneurs Themselves
As more people aspire to become entrepreneurs, it is important to dispel many of the misperceptions about this species. Here are six big ones that even some entrepreneurs believe:
The following post is by Bill Aulet, the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
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When to Call  and  When to Email
It might seem old fashioned, but sometimes making a call is the best way to get an answer, says entrepreneur Jason Womack. You can speak a lot faster than you can type and picking up the phone to do something like scheduling a meeting is always the better option.
“People do business with people they trust.”
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William Heinecke, an Early Entrepreneur in Asia, is Still Finding Success
BANGKOK – William Ellwood Heinecke has always followed his instincts.
He started his first businesses, cleaning offices and selling advertising, as an expatriate high school student in Bangkok. He was a millionaire before he reached voting age.
Defying conventional wisdom at the time about overseas appetites, he introduced pizza to Asians in the early 1980s, the start of an empire of retailers, restaurants and resorts built around classic brands like Pizza Hut, Sizzler,  s across 22 countries. He has moved up the value chain, developing his own successful brands.
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Self-Finance or Raise Money? A Quandary for Start-Ups
The founder and chief of RJ Metrics, Robert J. Moore, and his co-founder chose to finance the business with their own money.
Roman Stanek and Robert J. Moore had the same dream. The two entrepreneurs saw businesses collecting lots of data about their customers’ Web transactions and decided there could be a huge market in helping those businesses analyze the data to determine who their customers were and how best to reach them
Vodafone to Buy Germany’s Top Cable Giant for $10 Billion
The British telecommunications giant Vodafone  announced that it was buying the German cable operator Kabel Deutschland for 7.7 billion euros, or $10.1 billion. The deal, one of the largest in Europe this year, follows almost six months of jockeying to acquire Kabel Deutschland, Germany’s largest cable operator
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How To Raise An Entrepreneur
A very influential article by an young entrepreneur, how and what factors influenced him  and many more.
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What Angel Investors Want Now
U.S. angel investment trends are shifting. The mobile sector is getting ever more attention and the health-care sector is losing dollars, according to the second annual Halo Report, released today from the advocacy organization Angel Resource Institute, entrepreneur-focused Silicon Valley Bank, and the National Science Foundationbacked data research firm CB Insights

College Entrepreneurs Create Software to Help Businesses Thrive
To Dan Shipper, those few lines at the bottom of a digital message offer significant untapped potential. “Companies that aren’t taking advantage of e-mail signatures to promote their products and services are missing out on opportunities to connect with their customers,” he says.
The 21-year-old junior at the University of Pennsylvania began writing code when he was 10. After creating and selling several successful websites, Shipper was ready for a new project. In 2011 he partnered with Patrick Leahy and Justin Meltzer, both seniors majoring in entrepreneurship at the Wharton School at UPenn, to develop Airtime, a program that creates banners that turn e-mail signatures into branded messages.
Airtime allows brands to develop multiple banners for their e-mail signatures and track the number of impressions and click-through rates for each. After a brief beta period to test the concept, the UPenn entrepreneurs launched the company (airtimehq.com) in January 2012. Within weeks the program had attracted international clients.
Without disclosing revenue, the founders report that more than 300 customers have signed on for their free plan or for packages priced at $10, $50 or $150 per month. Further, they say, starting the company cost nothing more than their time, domain purchase and hosting fees. “Our goal was to concentrate on businesses that have minimal startup costs and are profitable from the start, which is something that is possible with software companies,” Shipper explains.
Once Airtime was operational, the partners were eager to launch another software project. This time they focused on the screen-sharing model for customer service, which allows brands to guide consumers through websites. With other screen-sharing systems, users have to download a program to a home PC, then allow a service rep to control their computer, which raises privacy concerns. The trio’s second business, Firefly, is download-free and limits viewing to the one website the customer is visiting (as opposed to allowing access to the entire computer). “A lot of companies didn’t know this was even possible,” Meltzer says. “It allows them to [handle more calls] in the same amount of time.”
In three months Firefly snagged 150 customers. Users can sign up for a free plan or pay $15, $30 or $60 per month to use the screen-sharing program.
The software also attracted the attention of Dorm Room Fund, a pilot program started by First Round Capital that plans to invest $500,000 in student-run enterprises around Philadelphia by the end of 2014. Firefly received $20,000 in funding.
“They are talented and motivated and one of the best student entrepreneurial teams at [UPenn],” says Talia Goldberg, a Dorm Room Fund board member. “They are going after a proven market with a product that differentiates itself [and] had a very clear way to generate revenue. It embodies the kind of businesses Dorm Room Fund wants to invest in.”
The funds will be used for customer acquisition. In the meantime, Shipper says, the experience of running two successful software companies is paying huge dividends for the three students: “Coming up with a concept, building a product, marketing it and talking to investors has been an incredible learning experience.”
Common Fatal Flaws in a Start Up
1.    Product rather than Market Focused.
1.    Most common with corporates and engineers.
2.    Starts with a great idea or product stumbled across.
3.    Instead start with a narrow market problem defined.
2.    Individuals must be teachable to be Investible.
3.    Think global, act locally – rather than thinking locally to take globally.
4.    Vision definition is skipped. Movements have nothing to move with.
5.    You are probably not in the business you think you are in.  American Express is in the short term money market, McDonald’s is in real estate.
6.    Lack of secured company value enables competitors to reverse engineer and copy. A Patent is not enough.  Develop multiple revenue models, contracts, systems and processes, digital IP, data and emotional commitment…
7.    Me too small businesses are not entrepreneurial ventures.
8.    Fast growth does not occur organically or traditionally. It cannot be ‘planned’. It requires opportunity creation in each moment and network science application.
9.    Incremental innovation is part of managing a large mature firm.  Radical innovation is part of new venture creation and 80% of Board targets.
10. Plan to Exit via trade sale, even if goal is IPO.  If you cannot establish trade sale strategic value, then investors will see through the veneer.
11. Transactional rather than social focus.
12. Focus on manufactured markets such as government subsidies, grants and VC valuation rounds.
13. New markets must be made aware, have opportunity to observe, to be educated with a chance to try.  They cannot be ‘sold’ to.
14. Leaders are controllers rather than enablers.
15. Entrepreneurs have commercialised three or more opportunities. Not one. Not two. You may want to be an Entrepreneur. You may have entrepreneurial characteristics. That is different.
16. Boards set strategic direction as a team, contributing intellectual capital and network.  Executives execute, leading administration, operations, marketing and finance.  Companies need both.
17. Labour hours limit capacity for growth.  Automate.  Goal: one-to-many creation.
How to Win a Business Negotiation
If you are in business, then you will be a negotiator.
Without transactions, business doesn’t happen, and every transaction involves a certain amount of negotiation.
Please click the below link to know more
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226009#ixzz2NnVsEVlx
Maintaining Your Startup’s Focus 
Why many startups fail ?
In many cases, a new venture falters for obvious reasons–not enough capital; before its time; founder fatigue … the list goes on. Yet other instances of failure seem inexplicable.
To know more, please click the below link
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225935
7 Paybacks an Alma Mater Can Offer Young Entrepreneurs
Student-entrepreneurs have it easy. When they want advice, they ask their professors who’ve likely been there and done that. When they need resources, they head off to the campus computer lab or research facilities. When they need test subjects, they turn to their classmates.
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 College Entrepreneurs Find a Green Niche in an Online Farmers Market
When the entrepreneurship club at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, challenged students to come up with ideas to stimulate the state’s small-business economy, Danny Garin, an economics and government major, envisioned a virtual farmers market stocked with local produce and artisanal products.
“There are a lot of high-end markets [here], but nothing that replaces the farmers market experience,” Garin, 21, explains.
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How the Farm-to-Table Movement Is Helping Grow the Economy
This movement is started in the US and can be tried in India also.
It is very encouraging to see so many restaurants and consumers choose to source and eat locally.  The food tastes better, is healthier, has less of an impact on the environment, farmers retain more of each food dollar spent, and local economies benefit by keeping more dollars in the area.
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Bigwalk
Bigwalk is the smartphone application to dornate an artificial leg for those who cannot easily walk. It is a  for profit social enterprise based in Korea and helps the amputees. An interesting business model which needs to be examined.
Business Model: for profit
Sector : Social Enterprise
Country: South Korea
Every day we wake up and walk to the bathroom to wash, walk to the kitchen to eat, walk to the room to get changed, walk to work, walk to supermarket to buy stuffs, walk to meet friends and people, and walk to exercise.
Walking. This seemingly common and small action done on daily basis seems really trivial to many people. However, there are people who cannot do such daily and regular activity. Thus Bigwalk has decided to give special meanings to our walks so that we can share with those who cannot.
Bigwalk is a free application which enables smartphone users to donate by walking, a daily life activity. Just by starting the application and walking, the users can donate 1 won per 100m.
First, Bigwalk starts out by helping out the amputees. Amputees in Korea are increasing at a rate of 25 people per day, adding up to 8694 amputees per year. But leg prosthesis is highly expensive even with the government’s financial support. Thus Bigwalk wishes to provide amputees with safe and high quality artificial legs with the donations collected.
Bigwalk wishes to create a new business/donation platform where giving and donating is part of every day life.
Bigwalk wishes to open up the opportunity for the public to be aware of the significance of small sum donation.
Bigwalk wishes to achieve and make things possible by putting meanings into walking, a small and everyday behavior.
Bigwalk wishes to share by walking.
“Walk to Give – Bigwalk”
Problem
There are currently about 180,000 amputees in Korea alone. The number is constantly increasing: 25 more amputees per day, 725 per month, and about 9000 per year. Amputees are people whose legs are cut off and cannot walk. Most of amputation is acquired by car accidents, anti-personal mind, and frostbite and so on. Thus amputation many times brings amputees to desperate situation causing psychological trauma. For these people, there are prosthetic legs, also known as artificial legs which could help them to walk again. However such legs are highly expensive: lower leg prosthesis costs 5,500,000 won and femoral leg prosthesis costs 8,500,000 won. Because of the exorbitant cost, even private sectors are unwilling to help out amputees. Not only the cost but many people are unaware of the seriousness of the sufferings that amputees go through. In fact, according to one research, only 192 out of 735, about 26.2%, heard about amputees in Korea. Lack of awareness is also a crucial problem. And yet, there is no effective organization or government support to help these people out. Many are avoiding the problem because of the high cost of artificial legs. Many do not even recognize the problem. More importantly, amputees are problems in many parts of Asia. There are over 500,000 lower limb amputees alone in Nepal, most suffering from a loco-motor disability. Of them, about 90.5% suffer from economic problems as well.
Solution
Bigwalk helps amputees by a free application where users can donate just by walking. For every 100m, 1 won is collected and directly donated to the amputee via Korean Walking Association, one of current partners. The donation money comes from advertising services or products related to walking and health. Bigwalk does not have a specific targets. However, Bigwalk hopes to expand throughout the nation and eventually around the world so that the size and speed of donation can increase and more amputees can be helped out.
The Most Entrepreneurial Colleges
 Mining its database of 20 million college grads, LinkedIn identified alumni of these schools as founders of the most companies with 10 or more employees.
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One of the newest Facebook features, called Promoted Posts, allows business pages with 400 or more “likes” to pay from $5 to $100 so that more fans — and friends of fans — see their posts in their News Feeds on computers and mobile devices.
To know more, please click the below link
 How to Become Risk Savvy
An entrepreneur is a person willing to take a risk with money to make money.”  An article by   Steve Strauss. To read more, click the link below
How to Compete with the Big Chains?
Think and Act Locally
What do you do as a small, independent retailer when a major food chain, big-box store or national franchise becomes a direct competitor? All along you’ve been specializing in items that aren’t in the mainstream but sell well, and then some big outfit like Sears or Walmart decides they’re going to horn in on your action.
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Here’s a way to boost youth employment: Help them start up.
At the Young Entrepreneurs Academy, or YEA, middle and high school students in certain parts of the country can participate in a nine-month-long afterschool program that attempts to guide them through the process of starting a business — from developing a business plan and pitching investors to obtaining funding and building a website.
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Could Faculty Entrepreneurs Drive Innovation?
Entrepreneurship is an increasingly hot topic on college campuses these days. Across the country, administrators at schools large and small are hurrying to create or beef up existing programs, hoping to attract top young talent and the alumni donations and federal grant money that could come with it. But all the talk about entrepreneurship may be leaving one very important group out of the conversation — university professors.
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Academia Suppresses Creativity
Creativity enhances life. It enables the great thinkers, artists and leaders of our world to continually push forward new concepts, new forms of expression and new ways to improve every facet of our existence. The creative impulse is of particular importance to scientific research. Without it, the same obstacles, ailments and solutions would occur repeatedly because no one stepped back and reflected to gain a new perspective.
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Get Great Publicity
A good PR campaign is often crucial to the success of your business or personal brand.   The rewards that you can get from free media exposure, by positioning yourself as an expert in your field, far outweighs the rewards of a paid advertisement.
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Mind Hacks: How Innovators Really Arrive At Their Big Ideas
One of the stranger articles Inc. magazine ever ran was a 2002 piece about the neuroscience of innovation. Actually, it wasn’t really about innovation as much as where and how innovators get their ideas. Only it wasn’t that either. It was really about what kind of peculiar mind-hacks top innovators use to come up with their ideas and—the strange part—it opens with a discussion of inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil’s employment of lucid dreaming to solve vexing engineering problems.
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Student finds new way of turning plastic into biofuel
[CAIRO] A method for generating biofuel by breaking down plastics using a low-cost catalyst will be developed further in the United Kingdom next month 
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The Edupreneur
India will need newer educational institutions by the thousand to meet its lofty human developmental goals. This time is ripe for the education entrepreneur, both for the numbers that have to be generated and the quality that will be needed. Meet the trailblazers by Deepshikha Punj.
( Please click the below link to read this article which is published in Indian express on 01-July-2012)
How Place impacts Entrepreneurship
Simple question: how are business startups going from the idea phase to real action and implementation? How does place – the physical location of this conversion of ideas into action – have an impact on entrepreneurship? And where can we track this relatively new phenomena as it happens? 
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