WSJ.com

What Obama Win Means for Small Business and Entrepreneurs

November 8, 2012

I just posted Now Let’s Hold Both Parties Accountable for What They Do to Small Business on the smplans.com blog. It’s a riff on Sarah Needleman’s excellent summary on WSJ.com, called Clarity for Small Firms. I hope you can see that one; I’m not sure about the pay wall. She summarizes the situation for taxes, [...]

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Go Ahead, Search Me … and Give Me Better Info

August 2, 2012

What bothers me isn’t that Orbitz steers Mac users to pricier hotels, as WSJ.com reports; it’s that some people act like that’s somehow illegitimate, unfair, or deceptive. I say, on the contrary, give people what they like.  Not everybody wants the cheapest hotel available. Many people prefer paying a bit more for something better. And [...]

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A Potentially Creative Management Team Assessment Idea

December 15, 2011

Whether you’re a football fan or not, I suggest you take a quick look at NFL: The Giants on the Giants on WSJ.com today. And that’s especially if you’re running a business, or working on a business team. And even more so if you’ve heard about the 360 methodology for polling teams – business teams [...]

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A Hard Real-World Lesson About Getting It in Writing

November 29, 2011

I just read American Express’s Small Business Saturday Event Spurs Backlash on WSJ.com. It’s sad but not surprising to see what seemed like a wildly successful small business promotion turn sour like this. Putting big companies together with small business and development organizations is tough. Compatible goals are a frequent problem. Here’s a quick summary: Now, [...]

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The Nature-Nurture Debate on Entrepreneurship

March 21, 2011

Is entrepreneurship something people are born with, or do they learn it? Good question, I suppose, but not one I expect anybody will ever be able to really answer. Emily Malby does a good balanced job of reporting about it in Entrepreneurship: A Look at the Nature-Nurture Debate on the Online Wall Street Journal (WSJ.com). [...]

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Hell with School or Work, Startups are Genetic

June 17, 2010

What a relief. Entrepreneurship is genetic. That’s great news. Here I’ve spent all this time (since 1974) thinking it was ideas, plans, teams, taking steps, getting things done, doing things well, paying the damned bills, solving problems, and all that hard stuff. What a waste! In Is Entrepreneurship Genetic? on Brazen Careerist, Jake Poinier writes: [...]

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Why Business Planning is Like Regular Exercise

June 8, 2010

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a couple of weeks now, ever since somebody tipped me off to Gentle Nudges Work to Get People Exercising on WSJ.com. That report cites research showing that regular reminders helped people get regular exercise. Phone reminders from real people worked better than computer reminders. And both kinds [...]

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