Technology

Small Business Labs on Trends for 2011

January 10, 2011

Sure, there are lots of trends pieces going around these days, but Steve King of Emergent Research is the best expert I know on researching trends and putting them into sensible pieces. His company does some really good trends research that is often published by Intuit. , so I’d like to share his Top 10 [...]

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Looking For the Rest of this Patent Story

January 6, 2011

What a shame. Although we all like neatly packaged stories — heroes and villains, good vs. evil, David vs. Goliath — it’s rarely that simple. For example, late last year there was what seemed to be a great David vs. Goliath story about this inventor guy who teaches at Yale getting $625 million from Apple [...]

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The Pull of Bloat and Feature Addiction

December 15, 2010

This one struck a nerve: This is by Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals, in How to Kill a Bad Idea earlier this month at Inc.com. He’s talking about how software and websites grow too big. The software grows. Version 2.0 comes along. It does more than Version 1.0. More features, more options, more screens, [...]

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Does the Kindle Tell You Something About Your Pricing?

December 14, 2010

While I tend to think pricing too low is one of the most common mistakes in small business, there’s still something to be said for finding the pricing sweet spot. Sometimes elasticity works. For example, in Amazon says it has sold millions of Kindles This Quarter, Business Insider notes: Amazon [says it] has “already sold [...]

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Twitter is the Brush, Not the Painting

December 10, 2010

On one hand, twitter offers a positive change in business landscape, a brave new world of business possibilities, and you’re crazy to ignore it. On the other, it’s just a distraction, a shiny new thing, that gets in the way of the real business. Can both hands be right? Yes. The one hand: I spend [...]

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Why Would You Ever Make a Cold Call Again?

November 24, 2010

This interesting exchange comes from a NYTimes interview with Eric Lefkofsky, 40-year-old founder of groupon, serial entrepreneur, who Forbes says is worth about $750 million. The interviewer asks him: Do you think that every business needs to rethink what social media means to its future? He answers: Today, I think that every business is again [...]

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What Does Creativity Have to Do With Business?

November 2, 2010

What does creativity have to do with business? Business is about dollars and deadlines and suits, while creativity is about nerds and long hair and artsy-fartsy. Or is it? As the digital technology revolution matures, it is becoming more about creativity and less about engineering. That’s quoting Fred Wilson, venture capitalist and thought leader, in [...]

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When Patents Are Patently Absurd

August 31, 2010

Is Paul Allen a patent troll now? The same Paul Allen that was Bill Gates’ partner in Microsoft? Paul Allen who is worth billions of dollars? Oh no. Say it ain’t so. Last week wired.com reported Paul Allen Files Patent Lawsuits Against Entire Web … Except Microsoft. Allen, Bill Gates’ original partner in Microsoft, and [...]

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Your Brain on Drugs? No, Your Brain on Computers.

August 26, 2010

Remember the “your brain on drugs” commercials? You’d see the egg frying in the pan, and then the announcer’s voice would say “this is your brain on drugs.” What do you think of the Your Brain on Computers take on this?  It makes it sound almost as bad as your brain on drugs. That brain [...]

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5 Reasons Not To Build That Online Community

August 25, 2010

Trends? “Let’s develop a community,” they say, meaning an online community. Search google for let’s develop a community and you get 23 million hits. You tell me: is there a marketing meeting brainstorming web opportunities that doesn’t include an online community? So, contrarian hat on my head, I want to list some reasons not to [...]

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