The Venture Edge

Since the summer of 2008, I've been working behind the scenes on a book about Network Solutions, the company that used to hold the government-sanctioned monopoly for domain name registration. As a part of the project, I've done tons of research, and I have been amazed at just how quickly the Internet grew once email accounts and websites became available to businesses and individuals. According to VeriSign, there are currently 225 million domain names in use worldwide. Today, it seems that most everything we do somehow involves the Internet. 

 I've just returned from one of my favorite conferences, the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators (NCIIA) conference in San Francisco, and I have to say that inventing to solve real world problems is alive and well.  Bravo to all the teams represented from universities around the U.S. who found ways to solve compelling problems both here and in emerging economies.

With spring now officially sprung, the thoughts of many entrepreneurs and businesspeople are turning to getting out and boosting their business. Jason Selk PhD is the Director of Mental Toughness for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, and the author of 10-Minute Toughness (McGraw-Hill, 2008) and Executive Toughness (McGraw-Hill, 2011). In his position with the Cardinals, he has had the opportunity to hone a variety of techniques that have made him one of the nation's business and performance coaches. Just in time for spring, Jason offers the following 5 Spring Training Tips for Businesspeople.

After another week of hearing budding entrepreneurs claim that they either have no competition or that their competition is essentially irrelevant, I felt compelled to speak out.  Whether you’re a scientist with the temporary monopoly of patents you want to commercialize or the latest Internet startup in a niche that no one else has targeted, let me say this loud and clear—you DO have competition.

I recently read an interesting article on the trendwatching.com website about one reason why people buy some products and not others. According to the article, people embrace brands that are flawsome, that is, they behave more humanly and are not afraid to show their flaws. 

 Imagine having thousands of workers available on demand to do the work you don’t have time or employees to do.  Crowdsourcing has been around for a number of years and comes in many different forms: seeking solutions to problems, carrying out digital tasks, or hiring freelance workers, to name a few.  Several years ago, my business partner and I used a crowdsourcing site to design and build the look and feel for our nonprofit’s website.  It actually worked quite well, and we were happy with the result.  Best of all, we saved a lot of money and got it done within the budget we had.  Today, crowdsourcing has grown to include all sorts of business tasks that can be accomplished and delivered in digital form.  But is crowdsourcing all that it’s touted to be?