New Business Development Portal

Interesting Harvard Business Review article about Ford and it ’24 Hour Rule’ that has contributed to improved quality and responsiveness at Ford.
As stated in the article’ ‘You have 24 hours to take a new and emerging issue, try to understand it and see if you can resolve it yourself. After that, you have to go public with it.’
Read it here:

Here are some tips when you are writing a business plan for you to consider:

1. Convert it to a PDF document and give electronic versions over paper copies. First this protects you from someone being able to change your text. Second it gives a more professional look to your plan. (Hint: do this for your resume).
2. The entire focus should be about your business, not the science. The audience will want to see target markets, channels, sales, costs, exit strategies, defensibility, scalability, etc… This may be difficult if you are the inventor and your background is scientific. I suggest you go to various classes offered in your area (many states offer free classes), check on line or hire a consultant.
3. Include early sales, testimonials from customers, are great adders that not only validate your science, they show early market success.
4. Summarize, summarize, and summarize but do it well!!! Be brief and more importantly, do not fall victim in becoming repetitive. This is a killer. If you said it once, you said it. If you can condense your plan down to fewer pages, this is great. There may be some whom thing more is better but my experience is less is superior as long as you are getting your points across. This also allows for you to utilize larger fonts in the document. Nothing is worse than a business plan in small fonts and multiple pages in length.
5. Layout your achieved milestones, and milestones you are working towards.
6. Financials need to be realistic. Don’t display gross margins that are greater than the industry average you are targeting unless you have the next iPad. This will make most investors believe you don’t know the business you’re in.
7. Update your intellectual property with not only patents granted, what’s in the pipeline, coverage (US only or global). Be sure to include an analysis of the competition, how defensible your patents are and any right to practice issues.
8. Include cash flows items such as inventory management, receivables and collection days. Make sure you discuss quality and how you will control it, especially if you are out sourcing the manufacturing. Too many times I see business plans that just say we have identified a low cost manufacture off shore and fail to discuss logistics, quality, scale up and such.

The UNH Center For Venture Research is reporting that Angel $ investments were down slightly in 2009 from 2008 while the number of investments increase which results in less dollars per investment.

Software was the largest investment (19%) with healthcare services/medical devices (17%), industrial/energy (17%), retail (9%) and biotech (8%). For 2009, mergers and acquisitions represented 54% of the angel exits, and bankruptcies accounted for 40 % of the exits. Annual exit returns based on mergers, acquisitions and IPOs, for the angel investments were between 23% and 38%.

The biggest difference was seen in the seed/start-up stage and first stage investing, for 2009 the capital investments were 35% of the angel investment, this was down 10% from 2008. What makes this difficult is the trickle down from venture capital and other funding sources have really steered away from seed/start-ups as they view this segment as high risk.

Source:  Angel Investor Market Holds Steady In 2009 But Changes Seen In Types Of Deals, UNH Center For Venture Research Finds

#1 Understand Your Market
#2 Define Your Goals
#3 Understand Your Customers
#4 Create Your Brand
#5 Your Marketing Should Lead to Sales
#6 Don’t Under Estimate Your Competition

I added #6 as I see this all of the time, your competition will react to you if you are successful. It may be positive such as buying you out for mega $’s or cutting the price to force you out.

Source: 5 Things Every Entrepreneur Should Know about Marketing | OrangeSoda Blog.

Yet another article on the lack of cash for start ups in 2010. The WSJ reported that small startups are facing cash crunches as investors have been pulling back from this segment. Early stage startups are considered high risk and rightly so, as they are, and hence funding is getting harder to find. Angel investors, whom often invest in early stage companies, have also been pulling back. The good news is access to capital is better this year but forecasts suggest another 12 to 18 months of tightness.

Source: Start-Ups Chase Cash as Funds Trickle Back – WSJ.com.

This is an interesting blog on developing metrics for Innovation. The author, Mike Brown, suggest you take a “whole-brain metrics” approach. He outlines three categories of metrics: Culture Metrics, Process Metrics and Return-Based Metrics as shown in the graph. While Mike mentions this may not be an exhaustive treatment I found it rather simple and similar to some of the metrics I have used to measure Innovation.

Source:
Blogging Innovation: Innovation Metrics – A Whole Brain Strategy – Innovation blog articles, videos, and insights.

Interesting online article from CNN Money on the details of six startups and how they raised cash. Some great creativity and just proves if you are motivated and driven you will succeed.

• AirBnB
• Makerbeam
• Boutique Larrieux
• Everlater
• Measy.com
• The Extraordinaries

Source:
Where to get startup cash now – AirBnB (1) – Small Business.

In the April, 2010, Harvard Business Review there is an interesting article on “Why Businesses Don’t Experiment”. It sited a couple of examples where the author was consulting with some large companies and choose not to try something different even though they had come to him to look at change.

This is a common theme you often find within the cultures of many larger corporations. I know one in particular that has tried several times to change their culture to one where failures are seen as trying, with the old adage that you only learn by doing. However it seems that conservatism normally takes over and upper management perceives that they have too much at stake and hence back off from “experimenting”. Change is difficult for large corporations as they have spent years branding themselves and any one business unit that deviates from the corporate branding faces a lot of scrutiny.

The smaller the company the more tolerant they are of experimenting and in some cases will actually promote it. Entrepreneurs often have to experiment with their opportunity to find the right niche. What separates these from large corporations, in my opinion, is they are “nimble”, meaning they can change very rapidly. It is very common for a small business or entrepreneur to go through 100′s of prototypes or designs before finding the right one to move into the market place. Large corporations rarely have the patiences for that type of turnover.

You can read the article here: Column: Why Businesses Don’t Experiment – Harvard Business Review.

This site offers a multitude of free information on all types presentations from speaking to slide preparation. They are many articles that offer helpful tips such as “target segment charts“.

Topics include:

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• Public Speaking – Presentation Skills, Nerves, Ideas, Tips, Topics, Secrets, Images, & Sales Presentation
• Forum

Presentation Magazine website

This site is a store house for many different types of documents, essays, business plans.

• Encyclopedia of Small Business
• Encyclopedia of Business
• Business Biographies
• Business Plans
• Encyclopedia of American Industries
• Encyclopedia of Management
• Company Histories
• Company Histories Part 2
• Leading American Businesses

Read more: Reference For Business – Encyclopedia of Small Business.